The Handmaid's Tale: The Handmaid's Tale

Going over Margaret Atwood's works I chose 'The Handmaid's Tale' as my main focus. Here is a brief summary of this novel:

This dystopian story about the near future is a woman's story of her being a handmaid and her struggle to survive the totalitarian government of Gilead. As a handmaid she has been deprived of her name, which is one's identity, and legal rights. She is assigned to a commander for reproductive purposes only. She is in a virtual household prison under constant surveillance. As a woman and handmaid she forbidden to read and write or to form any friendships or relationships with other people. Her only outings are for shopping purposes or attending public events such as Prayvaganzas, Salvagings and Birth Days. Once a month she has to undergo an impregnation ceremony where the commander sleeps with the handmaid with the wife beneath her.

Although freedom is non-existent Offred, our main character, chooses the freedom of refusal, meaning she refuses to believe in what Gilead is about, she refuses to forget her past and most importantly she refuses to be silenced by the oppressive regime.

Throughout the novel there is a sense of double vision, for Offred is always facing ways as she recounts her story, shifting between the present and the past (flashbacks). She talks of her meetings with the commander where they play Scrabble and she allowed toread the magazines he gives her, we as readers/audience learn about her illegal love affair with Nick the Commander's chauffeur.

Offres manages to tell the tales of secret women in this tyrannic government, such as Moira, the rebel who manages to escape from the Rachel and Leah center (Red center) and then reappears as a whore working at Jezebel's. There is the story of Offred's predecessor at the Commander's house who hung herself and left a secret message on the wall ("Nolite te bastardes carbormdorum"). There are also stories about Serena Joy (Commander's Wife) who used to be a TV personality on a gospel show.

At the end, Offred makes her exit from the Commander's house in a black not knowing whether she is heading for her death or an escape from Gilead ("And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light").

One might think that that is the end of the novel but there are the infamous 'Historical Notes' which are set in the year 2195 going 200 years beyond Gilead. Of course Offred is dead and Gilead itself has fallen. The 'Notes' fill in a lot of the background information about Gilead and how Offred's story came to be discovered. The novel ends with a question: "Are there any question?" which creates a challenge for the reader, it invites the reader to participate in interpreting the multiple and contradictory meanings of what we have just finished reading.

This video offers a brief summary about what the book is about, the struggle for survival of one

woman (Offred):