Study Guide to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
Context
18
1939
1961
The Edible Woman,
1969
Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-
1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The
Handmaid’s Tale falls squarely within the twentieth-century tradition of antiutopian, or “dystopian” novels, exemplified by classics like Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. Novels in this genre present imagined worlds and societies that are not ideals, but instead are terrifying or restrictive. Atwood’s novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia.
She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this
“religious right” heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in previous decades would be reversed.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights. In the novel’s nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has taken power and turned the sexual revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a society founded on a “return to traditional values” and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men. What feminists considered the great triumphs of the 1970s—namely, widespread access to contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female voters—have all been undone. Women in Gilead are not only forbidden to vote, they are forbidden to read or write. Atwood’s novel also paints a picture of a world undone by pollution and infertility, reflecting
1980s fears about declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear power, and environmental degradation.
Some of the novel’s concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the political goals of America’s religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaid’s
Tale remains one of the most powerful recent portrayals of a totalitarian society, and one of the few dystopian novels to examine in detail the intersection of politics and sexuality. The novel’s exploration of the

controversial politics of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwood’s novel a readership well into the twenty-first century.
Analysis of Major Characters
Offred
Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are told the entire story from her point of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she does. She tells the story as it happens, and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses enough faults to make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also possesses a dark sense of humor—a graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation.
Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly. She is hardly a feminist champion; she had always felt uncomfortable with her mother’s activism, and her pre-
Gilead relationship with Luke began when she became his mistress, meeting him in cheap hotels for sex. Although friends with Ofglen, a member of the resistance, she is never bold enough to join up herself. Indeed, after she begins her affair with Nick, she seems to lose sight of escape entirely and suddenly feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anything she does -herself.
Offred is a mostly passive character, good-hearted but complacent. Like her peers, she took for granted the freedoms feminism won and now pays the price.
The Commander
The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is Offred’s Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also bears responsibility for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more sympathetic and friendly toward
Offred than most other people, and Offred’s evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life. At times, his unhappiness and need for companionship make him seem as much a prisoner of Gilead’s strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling sympathy for this man.
Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself helped construct and that his prison is heaven compared to the prison he created for women. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred are selfish rather than charitable. They satisfy his need for companionship, but he doesn’t seem to care that they put Offred at terrible risk, a fact of which he must be aware, given that the previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to

the Commander were discovered. The Commander’s moral blindness, apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of Gilead, are highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s. The club, a place where the elite men of the society can engage in recreational extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that runs through Gileadean society.
Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best represented by a situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film, the mistress of a brutal death camp guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. “How easy it is to invent a humanity,” Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can seem human, and even likable, given the right set of circumstances. But even if the Commander is likable and can be kind or considerate, his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his callousness to the hell he created for women means that he, like the Nazi guard, is a monster.
Serena Joy
Though Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the establishment of the Gileadean state, her bitterness at the outcome—being confined to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a
Handmaid—suggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes might not enjoy getting their way as much as they believe they would. Serena’s obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, but she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her frustration on
Offred. She seems to possess no compassion for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her own life, but not that of another woman.
The climactic moment in Serena’s interaction with Offred comes when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that Serena makes these plans out of a desire to help Offred get pregnant, but Serena gets an equal reward from Offred’s pregnancy: she gets to raise the baby. Furthermore,
Serena’s offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with
Nick reveals that Serena has always known of Offred’s daughter’s whereabouts. Not only has she cruelly concealed this knowledge, she is willing to exploit Offred’s loss of a child in order to get an infant of her own.
Serena’s lack of sympathy makes her the perfect tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the willingness of women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and Atwood implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead.
Moira
Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship. Gilead claims to promote solidarity between women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty tyranny. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college onward does not exist in Gilead.
In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to Gilead. She is a lesbian, which means that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. More than that, she is the only character

who stands up to authority directly by make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center. The manner in which she escapes—taking off her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Aunt—symbolizes her rejection of Gilead’s attempt to define her identity. From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternative to the meek subservience and acceptance of one’s fate that most of the Handmaids adopt. When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebel’s, servicing the Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate. After embodying resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to exemplify the way a totalitarian state can crush even the most independent spirit.
Nick
A trusted, over-confident chauffeur for the Commander, he bears messages that summon Offred to the office and supplies black market cigarettes to
Serena Joy. When Offred first enters the Commander’s household, she notices Nick, who is polishing the staff car; soon afterward, he regularly stares at her, shows off his muscles, whistles, and displays an insouciant cockiness that belies his later importance in her life. As Offred’s lover, Nick listens dispassionately to her recital of past history and emotional outpourings during their fervid lovernaking. On the day that Serena confronts
Offred with evidence of adultery and calls her a slut, Nick, purportedly an operative for the Eyes and double agent for Mayday, sets up a phony arrest and has her spirited away in an Eyes van, possibly to an Underground
Fernaleroad way station in Bangor, Maine.
Aunt Lydia
Caught up in her fervency as a vigilant matron at the Rachel and Leah Re-
Education Center, Lydia, with her uplifted face, protruding yellow teeth, and steel-rimmed spectacles, spouts a tedious line of platitudes and truisms, warnings against immodesty, materialism, and a lack of interest in the traditional maternal role, especially motherhood. She seems sincere in her belief that the “Republic of Gilead . . . knows no bounds. Gilead is within you.”
Like a glory-struck drill sergeant, Aunt Lydia, armed with pointer, whistle, and cattle prod, stalks the gymnasium/barracks and administers mild, authoritative taps, a demonstration that “a little pain cleans out the mind.” In class, she inculcates Gilead’s future Handmaids with simplistic dogma: “It’s a risk you’re taking ... but you are the shock troops, you will march out in advance, into dangerous territory. The greater the risk the greater the glory.”
Luke
Offred’s husband is recalled in wisps of memory—the two of them walking down the street as they discussed buying a house or starting a family, throwing out accumulated plastic grocery bags to protect their daughter from suffocation, making up the term “sororize” to mean “acting like a sister.”

After fleeing his first wife to rendezvous with the novel’s main character during afternoons in hotel rooms, he enjoys lying close with her. A goodnatured man, Luke teases his feminist mother-in-law about the differences between men and women. She refers to him as a chauvinist “piglet.”
After the creation of the despotic state of Gilead, Luke exhibits what his wife interprets as paternalistic attitudes and behaviors toward her disenfranchisement and impounded bank account. He devises an escape plan and helps ease her tensions as the family packs a picnic and drives leisurely toward the Canadian border. Gunshots indicate that the foiled escape may have caused his death or, at best, grave injury during his capture.
Janine/Ofwarren
A former waitress, mother, and fellow Handmaid-in-training with Moira and
Offred, she loses herself in the “ecstasy of abasement” and consults privately in Aunt Lydia’s quarters. Before other inmates at the Red Center, Janine testifies publicly to gang rape during the decadent period preceding the formation of Gilead. Her trance-like state alerts Moira and Offred to her tenuous hold on reality. Aunt Lydia rebukes Janine for maudlin displays of piety, but calls on her to spy among the other girls for information concerning Moira’s escape.
In later encounters, Offred observes Ofwarren’s self-important display of a rounded abdomen during the late months of pregnancy, a violation of rules protecting expectant mothers from unnecessary public exposure to injury or harm. After the birth of baby Angela, Ofwarren weeps “burnt-out miserable tears.” Her triumphant delivery of a healthy child assures that she will never be sent to the Colonies or declared an Unwoman. Later, the baby proves to be a “shredder,” a failure that Janine blames on herself. During the
Particicution, Janine, her eyes denoting madness, benignly smiles at the savagery she participates in.
Offred’s Mother
An ardently militant feminist, she gave birth to her daughter at age thirtyseven and would be seventy at the time of the story, if she survived. Offred’s mother maintained a platonic relationship with her mate and engaged in harmless badinage with son-in-law Luke, but was in deadly earnest on the
Saturday when her companions burned pornographic magazines in the park.
In Offred’s dim memories, after a pro-feminist balloon release, her mother fades into the crowd as though losing her identity in mob mentality. At the time of the takeover, she lives in Boston and makes frequent visits to
Offred’s residence. Moira recognizes Offred’s mother as an Unwoman in a documentary film about the nuclearpolluted Colonies, where the life span of clean-up crew members averages three years.
Ofglen
The second of three Handmaids “of Glen” during the story, this current
Ofglen serves as a daily shopping companion for Offred three weeks after her

arrival at the Commander’s house. Giving the impression of exhibitionistic piety, Ofglen asks to divert their return from town so that she can pray at the churchyard. Later, Ofglen reveals that her sanctimony is pretense, a cover-up for “us,” an ill-defined rebel group. A rabid participant at the
Salvaging, Ofglen, a target of the Eyes, hangs herself before she can be arrested. Her replacement becomes the novel’s third Ofglen.
Themes
Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments
Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically decreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state.
Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation.
Language as a Tool of Power
Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite. Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives,
Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual names strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms “Unwomen” and “Unbabies.”
Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (“Children of Ham” and “Sons of Jacob,” respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier. There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as
“Prayvaganzas,” “Salvagings,” and “Particicutions.” Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of language
(“Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous example), and The
Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names.

The Causes of Complacency
In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of power or freedom.
Offred remembers her mother saying that it is “truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when
Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander.
Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the
Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for
Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule.
Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred,
Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a difference. In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance.
Central to The Handmaid’s Tale is the failed attempt to produce stasis in the form of a one-dimensional, ultra-conservative society. Like the figures marching across Serena Joy’s knitting or the Handmaids walking two by two to the meat market, Gilead’s citizenry is the product of a fiasco: a mock factory system methodically installed to enforce traditional values—that is, the fundamentalist concept of godliness. Oddly, on all levels of this sterile, soulless theocracy, the dynamics of God play virtually no part. As a worshipper, the Commander locks away the family Bible, which he, as male family head, retrieves for a brief reading before the monthly mating ceremony. The only other worship outlet is the local computerized prayer scripting franchise, where phone-in orders result in “five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin.” Atwood skewers this mechanized, voice-over performance by depicting the robotic Holy Rollers recycling paper printouts.
To assure consistency in the populace, the hierarchy either annihilates or exiles those who fall outside Gilead’s limited needs. For women who aren’t capable of producing babies or of working as matron, indoctrinator, spouse,

guard, or dray, the Colonies await, promising death from radiation poisoning.
Likewise, males like the Commander, Nick, and street guards must fit the tight pattern of role expectation or else suffer the consequence. According to the Twelfth Symposium, Commander Frederick Waterford is one of the many who fell short of the first cut. judged too liberal, despite his contribution to the conservative regime, he disappears during a purge, an internal political cleansing that parallels abortion. Like a “shredder” baby, Waterford is disposed of in order to make way for an even more stringent Gilead.
Ironically, Gilead’s attempts to root out nonwhites and dissidents fail. The terroristic cabal that wipes out the world of Luke and Offred, like the
Puritanism of seventeenth-century New England, collapses, leaving behind enough shards of its quirky idiosyncrasies to make it an attractive focus for
Professor Crescent Moon and Professor Pieixoto. Like a pterodactyl fallen from the sky and left to fossilize, Gilead precedes a period of multiculturalism, as evidenced by the names, nationalities, locale, and studies of dignitaries at the Twelfth Symposium of Gileadean Studies. A weak, hopeful sign is the name of Professor Maryann Crescent Moon, suggesting both rebel novelist Mary Ann Evans and a sliver of night light in the waxing stage, an eternal symbol of fecundity and womanly powers.
Rape and Sexual Violence
Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale.
The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the
Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at
Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels
Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders.
Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes
Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are called “Marthas” in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local police are “Guardians of the Faith”; soldiers are “Angels”; and the Commanders are officially “Commanders of the Faithful.” All the stores have biblical names:
Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself.

Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan “God is a National Resource” predominates.
Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies
Although The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and “sisterhood” to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric.
Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right.
Symbols
Cambridge, Massachusetts
The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for
America’s first religious and intolerant society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient
Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation.
Harvard University
Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the
Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in
Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.
The Handmaids’ Red Habits
The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the

Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the
Handmaids’ position in Gilead.
A Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the new world.
The Eyes
The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.
Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale
The epilogue is a transcript of a symposium held in 2195, in a university in the Arctic. Gilead is long gone, and Offred’s story has been published as a manuscript titled The Handmaid’s Tale. Her story was found recorded on a set of cassette tapes locked in an army foot locker in Bangor, Maine. The main part of the epilogue is a speech by an expert on Gilead named
Professor Pieixoto. He talks about authenticating the cassette tapes. He says tapes like these would be very difficult to fake. The first section of each tape contains a few songs from the pre-Gileadean period, probably to camouflage the actual purpose of the tapes. The same voice speaks on all the tapes, and they are not numbered, nor are they arranged in any particular order, so the professors who transcribed the story had to guess at the intended chronology of the tapes.
Pieixoto warns his audience against judging Gilead too harshly, because such judgments are culturally biased, and he points out that the Gilead regime was under a good deal of pressure from the falling birthrate and environmental degradation. He says the birthrate declined for a variety of reasons, including birth control, abortions, AIDS, syphilis, and deformities and miscarriages resulting from nuclear plant disasters and toxic waste. The professor explains how Gilead created a group of fertile women by criminalizing all second marriages and nonmarital relationships, confiscating children of those marriages and partnerships, and using the women as reproductive vessels. Using the Bible as justification, they replaced what he calls “serial polygamy” with “simultaneous polygamy.” He explains that like all new systems, Gilead drew on the past in creating its ideology. In particular, he mentions the racial tensions that plagued pre-Gilead, which
Gilead incorporated in its doctrine.

He discusses the identity of the narrator. They tried to discover it using a variety of methods, but failed. Pieixoto notes that historical details are scanty because so many records were destroyed in purges and civil war. Some tapes, however, were smuggled to Save the Women societies in England. He says the names Offred used to describe her relatives were likely pseudonyms employed to protect the identities of her loved ones. The Commander was likely either Frederick Waterford or B. Frederick Judd. Both men were leaders in the early years of Gilead, and both were probably instrumental in building the society’s basic structure. Judd devised the Particicution, realizing that it would release the pent-up anger of the Handmaids. Pieixoto says that
Particicutions became so popular that in Gilead’s “Middle Period” they occurred four times a year. Judd also came up with the notion that women should control other women. Pieixoto says that no empire lacks this “control of the indigenous by members of their own group.” Pieixoto explains that both Waterford and Judd likely came into contact with a virus that caused sterility in men. He says the evidence suggests that Waterford was the
Commander of Offred’s story; records show that in “one of the earliest purges” Waterford was killed for owning pictures and books, and for indulging “liberal tendencies.” Pieixoto remarks that many early Commanders felt themselves above the rules, safe from any attack, and that in the Middle
Period Commanders behaved more cautiously.
The professor says the final fate of Offred is unknown. She may have been recaptured. If she escaped to England or Canada, it is puzzling that she did not make her story public, as many women did. However, she might have wanted to protect others who were left behind, or she may have feared repercussions against her family. Punishing the relatives of escaped
Handmaids was done secretly to minimize bad publicity in foreign lands. He says Nick’s motivation cannot be understood fully; he reveals that Nick was a member both of the Eyes and of Mayday, and that the men he called were sent to rescue Offred. In the end, Pieixoto says, they will probably never know the real ending of Offred’s story. The novel ends with the line, “‘Are there any questions?’”
Offred’s story ends abruptly and uncertainly, which illustrates the precarious nature of existence in a totalitarian society in which everyone stands constantly poised on the edge of arrest and execution. Offred learns of
Ofglen’s death, finds that Serena knows of her visits to Jezebel’s, and is
(possibly) rescued by Nick’s intervention, all in the same day. Yet, even as events move quickly, Offred herself does absolutely nothing. Things happen to her; she does not make them happen. She demonstrates her lack of agency when she spends hours alone in her room, listlessly contemplating murder, suicide, and escape, but unable to act. Gilead has stripped her of her power, and so in a moment of crisis she can do nothing but think, and worry, and wait for the black van to come. Throughout the novel, Offred has maintained an internal struggle against the system, and a cautious outward struggle. It is when the news of Ofglen’s death terrifies her, and when she realizes she would rather give in than die, that help arrives. Atwood suggests

that in Gilead the tiny rebellions or resistances of one person do not necessarily matter. Offred escapes not because of her resistance, but despite her passivity. Luck saves her; she does not save herself.
When the van comes, Offred has no way of knowing whether it comes to save her or to bring her to her death, but she must go. In Gilead, women cannot escape alone. Someone must help them attain freedom. Her story ends either in “darkness” or “light,” she says, not knowing which it will be.
After this ending, with its leap into the unknown, the epilogue follows. It is simultaneously a welcome objective explication of Gileadean society, a parody of academic conferences, and offensive to the reader. We have just suffered through Offred’s torments with her, and it is shocking, as Atwood means it to be, to hear her life discussed in front of an amused audience, joked about, and treated as a quaint relic.
Professor Pieixoto makes references to Gilead’s clever synthesis of ancient customs and modern beliefs, he discusses the use of biblical narratives to justify the institution of the Handmaids, and he mentions the similarities between the “Particicution” and ancient fertility rites. None of these things will have escaped the notice of an alert reader, but this marks the first time we have heard them explained clearly and analytically. The epilogue also reveals information beyond Offred’s experience—the identity of Offred’s
Commander, the purges that took place frequently under the regime, and the success of the underground resistance at infiltrating the command structure.
By telling us that The Handmaid’s Tale was transcribed from tapes found in an “Underground Femaleroad” safe house, the epilogue undercuts the powerful ambiguity of the novel’s ending, letting us know that Nick was a member of Mayday, and he did attempt to get Offred out of the country.
Offred’s final fate remains a mystery, but the faithfulness of Nick does not.
In the epilogue, Atwood inverts Gilead, overthrowing the terrible world that she created. In opposition to the Gilead’s white, male-dominated patriarchy, in the new world the whites are the subjects of study, not the scholars and rulers. Professors have names like Johnny Running Dog and Maryann
Crescent Moon, which suggests that Native Americans dominate the academy. The great universities are in Nunavit, in northern Canada, and the map of the world, we are assured, has been remade. Once, white people studied the Third World; now the chair of the conference announces a speech from Professor Gopal Chatterjee, from the Department of Western Philosophy at the University of Baroda, India.
Pieixoto’s comment, that Gilead should not be judged too harshly because all such judgments are culturally conditioned, echoes and calls into question the moral relativism common among academics today. The novel has asked us to sympathize with Offred, and to judge Gilead evil, tyrannical, and souldestroying. In that case, -Pieixoto’s appeal for understanding, and the applause that follows it, suggests that such moral ambivalence sows seeds for future evils. The professor and the conference attendees are insufficiently

moved by Offred’s plight. They discuss her as a chip in a reproductive game, belittling her tale as the crumbs of history, and openly prizing a few printed pages from the Commander’s computer over her tale of suffering. This belittling of a woman’s life and glorification of a man’s computer suggests the patriarchal leanings of this new society. Offred and her trauma are remote to this group, but Atwood’s novel urges us to think that such a fate is not far off, but imaginable, for societies like ours and like Professor Pieixoto’s, which fancy themselves progressive but hold seeds of patriarchal oppression. The academics’ complacency and self-satisfaction seems dangerous. The closing line—“Are there any questions?”—gives the story a deliberately open-ended conclusion. The end of The Handmaid’s Tale begins a discussion of the issues the story raises.
Posed at the end of the novel in the form of an author’s appendix, this coda provides a framework and tongue-in-cheek historical perspective for Gilead’s story. Atwood’s abrupt shift in tone to witty repartee and punning benefits the work in several ways:
· Self-important, supercilious academic humor lightens the intense and chilling conclusion to Offred’s eerily bland recorded narrative.
· Details revealed in Professor Pieixoto’s speech extend some hope that she found her way to a Bangor way station and had enough time and freedom to locate a tape recorder and narrate her experiences in Gilead.
· Additional facts indicate that the theocratic repression found in Gilead also existed in Seattle, Washington, and Syracuse, New York.
· The method of ordering and communicating historical data in Offred’s day authenticates and legitimizes memoir and diary as indigenous literary outlets of oppressed women.
· The incongruity of recycled tapes by Elvis Presley, Boy George,
Mantovani, Twisted Sister, and Lithuanian folksingers heightens the comic departure from Offred’s dire situation. Also, the implications of each musical performance carry their own freight of meaning: Elvis, an idolized superstar and sex symbol; Boy George, a British rock singer who cultivates a bisexual image; Mantovani, a name synonymous with hypnotically bland elevator music; Twisted Sister, a heavy metal rock group whose name echoes Gilead’s perversion of womanhood; and Lithuania, a former free state subsumed by the Soviet Union in 1940.
· The nauseating political correctness of Pieixoto, who hesitates to side with
Offred’s account of murderous oppression in Gilead.

Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale
This is the real end of the story, of course, told as a parody of a scholarly symposium. Note the date, two centuries from now. The title which Offred's narrative has been given resembles those of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:
"The Knight's Tale," "The Wife of Bath's Tale." Most SF dystopias end with a heroic conspiracy or uprising leading to the destruction of the evil government which has oppressed everyone. The jarring shift to pretentious scholarly jargon, while amusing to scholars, may be off-putting for most readers; but Atwood is trying to avoid fatalism and sensationalism at the same time. She is also parodying the ponderous, self-conscious attempts of scholars to be humorous. There is a long tradition of "nowhere" names in utopian fiction. "Utopia" means "nowhere" and Samuel Butler called his utopia "Erewhon." The Chair comes from the University of "deny" which is in the country of "none of it." But Gord Turner of Selkirk College comments further on these place names:
The Northwest Territories in Canada as an area has been associated with two large native groups--the Dene (read "Denay") in the Western Arctic and the
Inuit in the Eastern Arctic. In fact, the Northwest Territories through referendum (already held) will be divided into two massive land areas known as Denendeh and Nunavut. "Nunavut" means "Our Land" to the Inuit.
So it's quite likely that Atwood meant the University of Denay to be coloured by the Dene and its massive land claims in the 1980s and the huge area to the East of the Mackenzie River Valley known as "Nunavut." That she changed the spelling of "Nunavut" to "Nunavit" is also interesting as "Nuna" still means "land" and "vit" may mean "our land."
Anthropology has traditionally been carried out by whites on minorities. Here an evidently Native American scholar has as her specialty studying whites, a deliberately ironic twist. Other names suggest that this conference is in fact dominated by Native Americans. It is difficult to see how Krishna (the erotic lover in Hindu mythology) and Kali (the also erotic avenging demon slaying goddess) have to do with Gileadean religion, though that may be Atwood's point. Scholars tend to read what they already know into w hat they are less familiar with. Certainly plenty of scholars have analyzed Krishna as a Christ figure. The reference to the "Warsaw Tactic" is more grim: the Nazis walled up the Warsaw Jews in the ghetto and proceeded to starve most of them to death. The reference to Iran is of course the most pointed, because of that nation's conservative Islamic revolution which involved strenuous demodernizing and drastic restrictions on the freedom of women. The Iranian example is one of the main inspirations of this novel. Given what Professor
Pieixoto has to say about the discovery of "The Handmaid's Tale," how drastically would America seem to have changed between the end of the last chapter and now? Anthropologists are famous for their refusal to judge the societies they study. What do you think is Atwood's reaction to this striving for objectivity in the case of Gilead? How do you feel about it? William

Wordsworth famously defined poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquillity."
Note the allusion. Many details about the Gilead society's policies are revealed here. Atwood takes the opportunity to point to current tendencies which could lead in the direction depicted in the novel. The speaker's jibe at
Offred's education is not a comment on women, but the smugly superior observation of a South American mocking the inadequacies of North America, clearly much fallen from its previous dominance. Note the Canadian references in this section. "Particicution" would seem to be a scholarly term formed out of "participant execution" to label what Gilead called "salvaging."
Gord Turner points out a parallel term promoted by the Canadian government: "participaction" for "participant action." For the scapegoat, see
Leviticus 16:10. Prof. Pieixoto's talk is of a type familiar to literary historians: the attempt to connect a the author of a text with some historical person known from other records, particularly in Medieval studies. But for us, the identification is irrelevant, it is the knowledge that Offred survived and the rebellion eventually triumphed that matters. The final call for questions is traditional, of course, but also serves here as an invitation to further discussion of the issues Atwood has raised.
The Femaleroad
Termed “Byzantium in the extreme,” Gilead, a fascist republic shaped out of an unnamed New England city by a repressive cabal of the religious right, contains enough texture to suggest a college town reminiscent of Boston.
Atwood mentions Massachusetts Avenue, students sculling the river, shoppers riding subways from the outskirts into the heart of the city, and antiquarian interest in old gravestones and colonial architecture. Leaving out secret details, Moira relates to Offred how she escaped Gilead. By connecting with Quaker station tenders of the Underground Femaleroad on a one-to-one basis, Moira reaches the center of the city in a mail sack. Because the border is closely monitored, her route takes her from Salem to a lobster fisherman’s home in Maine. She hoped to escape to Canada via the sea route—up the east coast and around the peninsula.
The Dystopian Novel
As Atwood reveals through her essays and interviews, The Handmaid’s Tale is an outgrowth of the twentieth-century dystopian point of view. Unlike pre-twentieth-century dreamers, altruists, and sectarians—such as Bronson
Alcott, Robert Owens, Henry David Thoreau, Mother Ann Lee, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Mary Baker Eddy, and Charles Fourier, who created perfect worlds on paper and launched experimental utopias (for example,
Brooke Farm, Pennsylvania Dutch enclaves, Christian Scientists’
Massachusetts Metaphysical College and Pleasant View Home, the pioneer beginnings of Salt Lake City, Utah, and the New Harmony and Oneida communes)—dystopian writers countered unbridled idealism with a worstcase perspective. George Orwell, master of the genre, wrote 1984 (1949), a nightmare novel set in London under a totalitarian regime where

manipulative rewriters of history change facts to suit political exigency, manipulate language to serve the truth of the moment, and suborn party menials with threats, coercion, and subtle terrors. Orwell’s brief beast fable,
Animal Farm (1945), presents a similar controlled misery in miniature as the disgruntled animals on an English farm revolt and evolve a fascist pig-run police state, which is far worse than their former servitude to the human farmer.
Other anti-utopian classics from the twentieth century exhibit the doubts, fears, and discontent of notable dystopists: Ayn Rand (Anthem), Aldous
Huxley (Brave New World), Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), Karel
Capek (R.U.R.), and Ray Bradbury (“There Will Come Soft Rains” and
Fahrenheit 451).
In most instances, creators of these hell-on-earth visions draw on the perversion of science and technology as a major determinant of society’s function and control. For example, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is set in a
California dystopia that features a fire department whose sole purpose is book burning. Likewise, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World contains a baby factory capable of manufacturing the prescribed number of people in each of five intellectual levels and indoctrination centers that train the resultant infants to embrace their lot in life. In contrast to the technical wizardry of
Capek, Burgess, Bradbury, and Orwell, Rand, in Anthem, evolves a society in which innovation is suppressed and people are forced to live in primitive squalor.
Atwood, whose Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates elements inherent in the dystopian genre, echoes numerous motifs and literary devices. Like Huxley’s creation of a drug-calmed society, her characters awaiting execution appear tranquilized by shots or pills. Like Huxley’s engineered reproduction,
Atwood’s fictional Gilead depends on the allotment of enslaved babymakers as a means of assuring the birth of white children to repopulate a declining
Caucasian nation. A factor that Atwood’s novel shares with Rand’s Anthem and Orwell’s Animal Farm is the subversion of aphorism as a means of indoctrination. Further enforced by overseers, these simplistic precepts are subject to change or reinterpretation, depending on the exigencies of the artificial society that they are meant to bolster and legitimize.
Epigraphs
To set the tone of The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood opens with three disparate epigraphs, or introductory quotations.
The first, from Genesis 30:1-3, cites the crux of the scriptural love story of
Jacob and Rachel. Having promised to work seven years in exchange for marriage to his uncle Laban’s daughter Rachel, Jacob is tricked into marrying the elder daughter, Leah, who bears him two sons. In her jealousy and selfabasement, Rachel, Jacob’s second and most beloved wife, insists that he

bed her handmaid, Bilhah, who also bears two sons. This biblical event forms the justification for twentieth-century Gilead’s Handmaid system as well as a prophecy: women who fail to conceive are devalued.
The second epigraph comes near the end of “A Modest Proposal Jonathan
Swift’s caustically satiric essay, published in 1729. Swift s incredibly objective speaker proposes the raising of children for sale as a food and commodity item in order to alleviate the poverty of poor families who produce more infants than they can afford to rear. The controlled, sincere tone of the unnamed proposer of this mad scheme parallels the earnest fanaticism of Atwood’s Gilead.
The final epigraph, taken from an Islamic proverb, suggests that there need be no laws against the obvious. Because people were not meant to eat stones, a traveler in the desert would not expect to see a prohibition against such a meal.
Atwood conjoins the three epigraphs by drawing on a controlling
metaphor: the images of produce, food, and eating, which create a motif of fulfillment. In Genesis 30, Jacob asks Rachel whether he is to be accused of denying her “the fruit of his womb.” Swift’s proposal, a cannibalistic economy based on the consumption of young children, supplants “vain, idle, visionary thoughts” in a lame attempt to alleviate social dysfunction. The final epigraph notes that no one seriously considers eating stones. The farfetched
juxtaposition of these three citations prefigures the extent of the fantasy in which prestige and/or survival for enslaved women resides in a waning society’s obsession with producing a healthy crop of children for its upper echelon.
To assure proper nourishment in potential mothers, the control of food and the denial of cigarettes and alcohol are crucial factors. Thus, during a wartorn era marked by food shortages and rationing, Offred, like a fatted calf, journeys daily to dairy, meat, grain, and produce markets to buy nourishing milk, bread, chicken, strawberries, and radishes; as the family’s hope of viable offspring, she lives literally off the fat of the land. On the down side,
Offred’s habitation resembles a stall in that she is allowed rest and exercise, but has no freedom of movement to divert her from her task of conceiving.
Also, like a brood animal, she must produce within a prescribed time limit or be dispatched to toxic clean-up crews in the Colonies or to Jezebel’s, a businessmen’s brothel.
Literary Analysis
A one-of-a-kind tour de force, Margaret Atwood’s futuristic Handmaid’s Tale refuses categorization into a single style, slant, or genre. Rather, it blends a number of approaches and formats in a radical departure from predictable
sci-fi or thriller fiction or feminist literature. Paramount to the novel’s success are the following determinants:

· existential apologia a defense and celebration of the desperate coping mechanisms by which endangered women survive, outwit, and undermine devaluation, coercion, enslavement, torture, potential death sentences, and outright genocide. Like Zhukov in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, Offred clings to sanity through enjoyment of simple pleasures: smoothing lotion on her dry skin and smoking a cigarette with
Moira and her lesbian sisterhood in the washroom at Jezebel’s; remembering better times with her mother, husband, and daughter, even the veiled sniping between Luke and his mother-in-law; recollecting the pleasant frivolities and diversions that women once enjoyed—for example, eye makeup, fashions, and jewelry, and women’s magazines; and allowing herself moderate hope for some alleviation of present misery, although
Offred never gives way to a fantasy of rescue, reunion with her family, and return to her old life.
· oral history a frequent vehicle of oppressed people who, by nature of their disenfranchisement through loss of personal freedoms, turn to the personal narrative as a means of preserving meaningful experience, and to recitation of eyewitness accounts of historical events in an effort to clarify gaps, myths, errors, and misconceptions. Similar to Jane, the participant in the Louisiana civil rights movement and title character in Ernest Gaines’ fictional Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and to Jack Crabb, the binational spokesman and picaresque participant at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn in Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, Offred offers an inside view of the effects of political change on ordinary citizens—that is, the powerless, who are most likely to suffer from a swift, decisively murderous revolution. As a desperate refugee on the “Underground Frailroad,” her harrowing flight contrasts the knowing titters of the International Historical Association studying Gilead from the safety of women’s rights and academic freedom two centuries in the future.
· speculative fiction a form of jeremiad—an intentionally unsettling blend of surmise and warning based on current political, social, economic, and religious trends. As a modern-day Cassandra, Offred seems emotionally and spiritually compelled to tell her story, if only to relieve the ennui of her once nun-like existence and to touch base with reality. Her bleak fictional narrative connects real events of the 1980s with possible ramifications for a society headed too far into conservatism and a mutated form of World War 11 fascism. By frequent references and allusions to Hitler’s Third Reich and its
“final solution” for Jews, Atwood reminds the reader that outrageous grabs for power and rampant megalomania have happened before, complete with tattoos on the limbs of victims, systemized selection and annihilation, virulent regimentation, and engineered reproduction to produce a prevailing
Caucasian race.
· confession an autobiographical revelation of private life or philosophy intended as a psychological release from guilt and blame through introspection and rationalization. Like the weeping survivors of the doomed

boy-kingdom in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Holden Caulfield rehashing his failures and foibles from a private California psychiatric hospital in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Offred frequently castigates herself for trying to maintain her humanity and fidelity to cherished morals and beliefs in a milieu that crushes dissent. In frequent night scenes, during which
Offred gazes through shatterproof glass into the night sky in an effort to shore up her flagging soul, her debates with herself reflect the thin edge that separates endurance from crazed panic. By the end of her tale, she has undergone so much treachery and loss of belief and trust that the likelihood of total mental, spiritual, and familial reclamation is slim. The most she can hope for is physical escape from the terrors of Gilead and the healing inherent in telling her story to future generations.
· dystopia an imaginary world gone sour through idealism that fails to correspond to the expectations, principles, and behaviors of real people. In the face of rampant sexual license, gang rape, pornography, venereal disease, abortion protest, and the undermining of traditional values, the fundamentalists who set up Gilead fully expect to improve human life.
However, as the Commander admits, some people are fated to fall short of the template within which the new society is shaped, the ethical yardstick by which behavior is measured. His chauvinistic comment is significant in its designation of “some people.” These “some people” are nearly all female, homosexual, underground, and non-fundamentalist victims—a considerable portion of the U.S. population.
Indigenous to dystopian fiction is the perversion of technology, as evidenced in Brave New World, 1984, Anthem, and R.U.R. In Margaret Atwood’s
Handmaid’s Tale, loss of freedom begins with what appears to be merely a banking error. Only after repeated attempts to access her funds does Offred realize that control of assets no longer exists for the women of Gilead. From credit card subversion, the faceless radical hierarchy moves quickly to presidential assassination, murder of members of Congress, prohibition of women from schools and the work force, control of the media, and banning of basic freedoms. Without books or newspapers, telephones or television,
Offred has no means of assessing the severity of society’s deprivations.
Controlled by Identipasses, Compudoc, Computalk, Compucount, and
Compuchek, she must rely on the most primitive measures of gaining information and securing hope, even the translation of scrawled Latin doggerel on her closet wall. Interestingly, Atwood does not resort to farfetched wizardry. Her astute use of televangelism, cattle prods, credit cards, roadblocks, border passes, computer printouts, barbed wire, public executions, and color-coded uniforms reflects the possibilities of subversion of current technology and social control devices.
Literary devices
Like a portion of modern fiction writers—Ray Bradbury, Fred Chappell, and
Toni Morrison—Margaret Atwood is, by nature, training, and profession, a

poet. Her facile expression of thought processes and manipulation of language to probe the psychological perversions in Gilead produce fascinating, multi-level rhetorical maneuvers, often juxtaposing weakness with power or cruelty with vulnerability. For instance:
Simile
· We would exchange remedies and try to outdo each other in the recital of our physical miseries; gently we would complain, our voices soft and minor key and mournful as pigeons in the eaves troughs.
· His skin is pale and looks unwholesomely tender, like the skin under a scab.
Symbol
· I read about that in Introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who’d give themselves electric shocks for something to do.
· The camera moves to the sky, where hundreds of balloons rise, trailing their strings: red balloons, with a circle painted on them, a circle with a stem like the stem of an apple, the stem of a cross.
Humor
· There’s a wad of cotton attached to the back, I can see it as she half turns; it looks like a sanitary pad that’s been popped like a piece of popcorn.
I realize that it’s supposed to be a tail.
· Is anything wrong dear? the old joke went.
No, why?
You moved.
Alliteration
· In the curved hallway mirror, I flit past, a red shape at the edge of my own field of vision, a wraith of red smoke.
· As for us, any real illness, anything lingering, weakening, a loss of flesh or appetite, a fall of hair, a failure of the glands, would be terminal.
Historical and Cultural Lore
· Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail,

garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light.
· Behind this sign there are other signs, and the camera notices them briefly: FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. EVERY BABY A WANTED BABY. RECAPTURE
OUR BODIES. DO YOU BELIEVE A WOMAN’S PLACE IS ON THE KITCHEN
TABLE?
Literary Allusion
· I would not be able to stand it, I know that; Moira was right about me. I’ll say anything they like, I’ll incriminate anyone. It’s true, the first scream, whimper even, and I’ll turn to jelly, I’ll confess to any crime, I’ll end up hanging from a hook on the Wall. [recall Winston’s capitulation to Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984.]
· But the frown isn’t personal: it’s the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for. [Parallel the shunning of Hester Prynne, wearer of the red
A in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.]
Aphorism
· Try to pity them. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
· They also serve who only stand and wait.
Parody
· My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within.
· “Blessed be the fruit,” she says to me, the accepted greeting among us.
Parallel Construction
· I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think the word relish. I could eat a horse.
· Fake it. . . . Bestir yourself. Move your flesh around, breathe audibly.
Dialogue
· “I didn’t know Ofglen very well,” I say. “I mean the former one.”
“Oh?” she says ...
“I’ve known her since May,” I say. “Around the first of May I think it was.
What they used to call May Day.”

“Did they?’ she says, light, indifferent, menacing.
“I could help you,” he says. Whispers.
“What?” I say.
“Shh,” he says. “I could help you. I’ve helped others.”
“Help me?” I say, my voice as low as his. “How?.
“How do you think?” he says ...
Foreshadowing
· She held her own hands out to us, the ancient gesture that was both an offering and an invitation, to come forward, into an embrace, an acceptance.
In your hands, she said, looking down at her own hands as if they had given her the idea. But there was nothing in them. They were empty.
· “Mayday,” she says. “I tried it on you once.”
“Mayday,” I repeat. I remember the day. M’aidez.
“Don’t use it unless you have to,” says Ofglen.
Biblical Allusion
· Give me children, or else I die. There’s more than one meaning to it.
· “Resettlement of the Children of Ham is continuing on schedule,” says a reassuring pink face, back on screen. “Three thousand have arrived this week in National Homeland One, with another two thousand in transit.”
Historical Allusion
· Possibly, we reasoned, this house may have been a “safe house” on the
Underground Femaleroad during our period, and our author may have been kept hidden in, for instance, the attic or cellar there for some weeks or months, during which she would have had the opportunity to make the recordings.
· The need for what I may call birth services was already recognize in the pre-Gilead period, where it was being inadequately met by “artificial insemination,” “fertility clinics,” and the use of “surrogate mothers,” who were hired for the purpose.

Sense Impression
· Down there in the lawn, someone emerges from the spill of darkness under the willow, steps across the light, his long shadow attached sharply to his heels.
· Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.
Repetition
· I am, I am, I am, still.
· Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
Euphemism
· Guns were for the guards, specially picked from the Angels.
· “Think of it as being in the army,” said Aunt Lydia.
Philosophy
· Even though some of them are no more than fourteen—Start them soon is the policy, there’s not a moment to be lost—still they’ll remember.
· Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it’s part of the procreational strategy. It’s Nature’s plan. . . . Women know that instinctively.
Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women.
Women in The Handmaids Tale
Atwood, who is famous for depicting themes of betrayal and treachery through the creation of strong and vulnerable female characters, produces a vivid set of possibilities with the women of The Handmaid’s Tale. The interplay between Aunts and Handmaids-to-be creates an intense effort at subjugation and indoctrination. The creators of Gilead show foresight in turning woman against woman, a method similar to Hitler’s use of prison trustees for some of the more onerous jobs of his death camps, particularly the placement of victims in ovens and burial details for those mowed down by machine gun fire. Although Offred resists brainwashing, her regular references to Aunt Lydia’s tedious, one-dimensional precepts and aphorisms
[“Modesty is invisibility”] indicate the success of the program. So thoroughly indoctrinated is Offred that she admits enjoying taunting Janine, a victim of

gang rape, and even succumbs to mass hysteria and takes an active role in a public execution. When a Japanese tour group tries to photograph Offred, she obscures her face behind her winged headgear and replies affirmatively to their question, “Are you happy?”
These instances suggest that Offred teeters on the brink of total acquiescence, a fact that haunts and terrifies her. Lacking the tough courage of a rebel, she keeps before her the examples of her mother and of Moira, both capable of razzing the establishment, of subverting authority. Offred lacks Moira’s chutzpah, as demonstrated by the dismemberment of the toilet flusher for use as a weapon against Aunt Elizabeth, but Offred does possess a sense of humor that is similar to Moira’s, a valuable buffer for some of her stolid moodiness and haunting dreams. Like some adults, Offred is approaching mid-life (roughly the age of Christ at the time of the Crucifixion) when she learns to value her mother’s commitment to women’s rights. A little like a sorrowful child herself, she looks back at her own daughter and dares hope that the child retains some memory of mother love.
Against the large screen on which Offred plays out her servitude are the lesser “Of’s”—the first Ofglen, who maintains the dogma of Handmaidenhood during visits to the cemetery and past the Wall; the subsequent Ofglen, who whispers that her predecessor hanged herself; and Ofcharles, the nameless, story-less victim of a Salvaging. A strong “Of” is “Ofwarren,” who retains enough of her former personality to be called Janine through most of the novel. A cloyingly complicitous trainee at Red Center, Janine annoys even the iron-spined Aunt Lydia with her ecstasy and cathartic reliving of gang rape.
However, Atwood rescues Janine from the stereotype of the sycophant by revealing an early scene of mental derangement, followed by a headforward, contraction-wracked birthing, and tears for little Angela, the handicapped infant whom she can never claim as her own. In the end,
Janine/Ofwarren becomes Ofsomebody else, but her mind ceases to observe rationality. Like a ubiquitous clerk or receptionist, she wishes her
Handmaiden sisters to “have a nice day.” To Offred, Janine, now “in free fall,” is unsalvageable.
Clustered about Janine and the other breeders is the pecking order of Gilead womanhood: Wives, Daughters, Aunts, Marthas, Econowives, and Unwomen.
Serena Joy is a composite drawn from Mirabel Morgan, Tammy Faye Baker, and Phyllis Schlafly; she is the true turncoat against women and must live with her futile hope for a return to traditional womanhood. Her own television career curtailed, Serena now suffers the pain of arthritis as her joints, like her compassion, freeze up. Her hands, endlessly turning out geometrically cloned hominids on knitted wool scarves, reach for the effusive flowers that mock her sterility. Like Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello, Serena associates herself with the willow, a gentle symbol of endless grief. Like
Niobe, the weeping non-mother of Greek mythology, Serena has no choice but to support Offred in concubinage to the Commander and surreptitious couplings with Nick if the family is ever to produce a child.

Setting
Atwood draws settings evocative of a fast-paced shift of moods. By probing
Offred’s pensive moments in the quiet of her Byzantine cell or on languorous walks to town by way of the cemetery or river, the author balances ennui and too much introspection with unforseen moments of unpredictability.
Without warning, Offred deserts a bland meal to enter the Birthmobile and hurry to the home of Commander Warren. At the side of Ofwarren, whose labor pains precede Aunt Elizabeth’s assisted delivery of baby Angela, Offred witnesses one of the more pleasant moments in an otherwise bleak series of scenarios. As Handmaids chant encouragement, the Wives leave their banqueting and prepare Warren’s Wife for the Birthing Stool, through which
Ofwarren’s child is born. Atwood saves for later the sobering fact that Angela turns out to be a “shredder,” Gilead’s cynical term for a freak, the product of radiation-damaged reproductive cells.
From the vivid birthing scene to a suspenseful night prowl of Commander
Fred’s parlor, Offred, lurking in the dark sitting room, is drawn into Nick’s embrace, then acknowledges the bizarre message—her master wants to see her in his private quarters. Incapable of guessing what he might want with her—more passionate sex, perversion, maybe even torture—she is nonplussed to enter a Scrabble competition, calling on word talents she has almost lost through months of living without books or newspapers. With the agility of a born negotiator, Offred profits from the Commander’s need for more intimacy and parlays her value to him into hand lotion and facts about the political scene.
From the privacy of “dates” in the den, Offred is startled to receive a showgirl’s outfit, complete with makeup, heels, and cloak, and to find herself being whisked away to Jezebel’s into a setting that, by Gilead’s standards, no longer exists. The “meat market” bar scene, now frequented by Arab and
Japanese businessmen, jolts Offred into the old-time man-woman games of flirtation, enticement, seduction, and acquiescence. Recalling that the nightclub was once a hotel, she pictures herself spending afternoons in clandestine meetings with Luke. Once more in a hotel bathroom, she must steady her nerve before performing the familiar female ritual of convincing her “date” of her eagerness to be seduced. To his dismay, she can only lie supine, a body obeying a mind that screams, “Fake it.”
The last six chapters pick up the rhythm of scene change. From her lonely upstairs room, Offred escapes the stifling over-ripeness of summer and creeps downstairs to the kitchen with Serena Joy and outside to Nick’s quarters. To Offred’s guilt-ridden dismay, the covert sessions with the chauffeur draw her into repeated trysts. Like a foretaste of doom, a tolling bell summons Offred and the rest of the female population to a Salvaging and Particicution. So unnerved is the main character that she returns to her room in an irrational state. Smelling the tar that her hands have encountered on the rope, Offred responds to animal-like urgings—the need to clean her

hands of death, intense hunger, and a cry of “I am, I am,” like a wolf baying at the moon.
The familiar street scene in Chapter 44 yanks Offred further into mental trauma—Ofglen has evaded arrest by killing herself. Overwhelmed by the encroachment of Gilead’s power, Offred is just beginning to calm herself when she encounters Serena and the incriminating sequined costume, proof that Offred and the Commander have transgressed Gilead’s controlled mating ceremony. By night, Offred stares from the window and enumerates her choices, ranging from fire and murder to a plea for mercy to flight to an agonized suicide. In one quick scene, Nick and two escorts whisk her down the stairs, past the Commander and Serena Joy, and into the van, an ambiguous Hellmouth that could lead to freedom or a hook on the Wall.
Biblical influences
In the Republic of Gilead, biblical references, mostly from the books
Jeremiah, Genesis, and Job, run through every aspect of daily life. In order to find out why the regime uses and even abuses the Bible in this way, it is necessary to first take a closer look at it.
On the most obvious and superficial level, the Bible plays an important role in the naming of objects and people in the Republic of Gilead. The men, according to their role in society, are called “Commanders of the Faithful”,
“Guardians of the Faith”, who are the members of the police force, “Angels” or “Eyes of the Lord”. The “Angels” are the soldiers of the army, and they have names like “Angels of the Apocalypse” or “Angels of Light”. Whereas the word “angel” suggests something innocent or holy, the “Angels” in Gilead fight in wars. The names seem to suggest that it is a religious war they fight.
The “Eyes” are the secret police who are supposed to spy on the people in
Gilead. The name is also taken from the Bible. (8)
Almost all the names of the women in Gilead occur in the Bible, too. The different classes that women are subdivided into are called “Wives”,
"Marthas”, “Handmaids”, “Econowives” and “Unwomen”. The name “Martha” refers to the sister of Mary who served Jesus rather than listened to his teachings. (9) In Gilead, the Marthas work in the household. The name
“Handmaid” refers to the Old Testament, namely to Genesis 30:1-3:
When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children or I shall die! […] Then she said, Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees, and even I may have children through her.
Rachel insists that her husband Jacob bed his handmaid because Rachel herself has failed to conceive. It is exactly this function that the Handmaids in Gilead have and that is justified by biblical statements. The fact that almost all the names given to the people in Gilead refer to the Bible suggests that the regime justifies the roles these people have in society with certain

events in the Bible. By doing this, the citizens’ roles are given biblical significance.
However, it is not only the names of the citizens that refer to the Bible but also the names of objects and institutions. The place where the Handmaids are trained and re-educated is called the “Rachel and Leah Centre” after the two sisters Rachel and Leah, the two wives of Jacob who both use their maids as surrogate mothers. (10) Even the names of brands, for example, of cars, refer to words in the Bible: “Whirlwind” (11), “Behemoth” (12) or
“Chariot”. (13) Biblical names even filter through other aspects of the commercial world. Names like bakery or butchers have been replaced by biblical names such as "Loaves and Fishes, "All Flesh" (14), "Lilies of the
Field" (15) or “Milk and Honey”. (16) By renaming even food and clothes shops like this, the state manages to establish references to the Bible in every aspect of daily life in Gilead. The new names are also meant to abandon old names for food shops that supposedly are “too much temptation” (17) for the citizens. However, these names are highly ironical as they suggest abundance, although food is in short supply because of pollution.
The most important name, namely that of the state itself, is an allusion to the Bible as well. In the Old Testament, Gilead is a very fertile and therefore very desirable region in ancient Palestine. (18) Ironically, the Republic of
Gilead in Atwood’s novel is exactly the opposite of fertile and desirable, which shows how the state tries to appear clean and pure, although it is not. It is a waste land that has been devastated by pollution and war and whose citizens are oppressed. (19) Significantly enough, the regime only uses statements from the Bible that present the beauty and godliness of Gilead and leaves out passages that imply negative things about the biblical model. One example for the choosing of biblical passages for the purposes of the regime is a passage in Hosea that Gilead chose not to use: (20) “Gilead is a city of wicked men, stained with footprints of blood”. (21)
The fact that the state uses passages from the Bible and prayers on purpose and chooses the ones that help promote the ideology of the regime can be seen in many other passages in the novel. In Gilead, all forms of personal conversation are prohibited and replaced by standardized phrases, “universal truths, maxims or slogans”. (22) The greeting ritual between the Handmaids consists of set phrases such as “Blessed be the fruit” or “May the Lord open”.
(23) This type of conversation not only has a biblical connotation but also shows the role and function that these women have in society, which is pretended to be of religious nature. It also represents the passivity of their situation. They are not allowed to lead a private conversation and express their thoughts. Instead, they are passive recipients of the ideology and the law of the Republic of Gilead, which is shown by another example of the conversation between the two handmaids Offred and Ofglen: (24)

“The war is going well, I hear,” she says.
“Praise be,” I reply.
“We’ve been sent good weather.”
“Which I receive with joy.” (25)
Apart from biblical names and biblical phrases, whole passages from the
Bible are used to manipulate the population. In the Rachel and Leah Centre,
Offred and the other Handmaids have to listen to the Beatitudes. However, the words are changed in order to perpetuate the role of the Handmaids:
Blessed be this, blessed be that. They played it from a disc, the voice was a man’s. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the merciful. Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out too, but there was no way of checking. (26)
Offred knows that this is not the original passage from the Bible, but she cannot look up the original words because reading and writing are prohibited and the Bible is locked away. The Commander is the only person in the household who is allowed to read it:
The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it? We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read. (27)
Offred’s comment shows that she is aware of the situation she is in. The state prohibits the reading of the Bible so they can keep using it the way they want without the citizens questioning it or proving it wrong. They want to make sure that the public do not find out that they sometimes even pretend that certain statements they use are taken from the Bible although they are not. (28)
Another example of the pseudo-religiousness of Gilead are the Soul Scrolls, prayer machines that print out endless roles of prayers which can be ordered by the Commanders’ Wives. Ordering these prayers is a sign of faithfulness, which helps the Commanders’ careers. However, because reading and writing are forbidden, no one ever reads the prayers that are printed out:
Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again. There are no people inside the building; the machines run by themselves. (29)
The only reason why people order these prayers is that the orders are registered; they are certainly not ordered because of interest in the prayers themselves. This hypocritical and superficial use and abuse of religion is put into contrast with the way Offred uses prayers.
In contrast to the official use of biblical passages and prayers by the theocartic state, Offred secretly prays in her own private way to express her feelings. Offred quite often addresses God, but a very long and significant scene is the one in which she changes the Lord’s Prayer to fit her situation and thoughts. By changing it, she refuses to take things literally – the same

way she refuses to pray at the prayer sessions in her Commander’s house.
(30) She rather expresses her own thoughts and feelings:
My God. Who art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within.[…] I have enough daily bread, so I won’t waste time on that. It isn’t the main problem.
The problem is getting it down without choking on it.
Now we come to forgiveness. Don’t worry about forgiving me right now.
There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don’t let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast.
You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves. […]
Oh God. It’s no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living? (31)
In her version of the Lord’s Prayer, Offred uses keywords from the original prayer (heaven, daily bread, forgiveness, etc.) and connects them with her private situation. She prays to God to help her and to help others. She also says that, although the regime uses the Bible as an ideological basis, she does not blame God for what is happening. Her statement “I have enough daily bread […]. The problem is getting it down without choking on it” shows how, in Gilead, the aspect of enjoying food is replaced by the functional, nourishing aspect of food. She “makes the connection between bread and spiritual sustenance”, (32) which stresses her emotional despair.
Although Offred can secretly resist the ideology of Gilead in her mind, she cannot escape the life she has to live according to her role as a Handmaid because in Gilead every action is controlled. Everyone has to act according to their role in society. As it is the case with language, the roles of the citizens and the practices in Gilead are justified by biblical references. Public events such as “Salvagings” (public executions) or “Prayvaganzas”(mass religious celebrations for group weddings or military victories) have names that refer to the Bible (salvation, praying). Other practices such as the act of spying on the citizens by the “Eyes” are justified by quotations from the Bible: “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to know himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him.” (33) This passage from II Chronicles (16:9) is read by the Commander at the monthly praying ceremony. In Gilead’s literary translation it means that the “eyes of the Lord”, the spies in Gilead, have to watch the citizens in order to check if they behave according to the rules of the state.
The most obvious allusion to the Bible as a justification for the practices in
Gilead can be seen in the role of the Handmaids. The quotation the state uses for declaring the role of the Handmaids as a religious, biblical role, occurs in Genesis, 30:1-3:
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, "Give me children, or I shall die!” And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, ”Am I in the place of God, who hath withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”

Then she said, “Behold my maid Bilhah, go in to her; that she shall bear upon my knees, and even I may have children through her.”
This quotation is one of the mottoes of the novel, and it runs through the whole book. With this passage, everything the Handmaids have to do is justified. In ancient Israel, as described in the Bible, women who could not conceive were devalued. It was a general practice that the women’s maids would be used as surrogate mothers. In Gilead, this principle is adopted in order to increase the white population. While the Handmaids are educated in the Rachel and Leah Centre and while they live in the Commander’s household, they are constantly reminded of the “religious” value of their function in society. They hear extracts from the Bible all the time, be it at the
Rachel and Leah Centre or at the monthly Bible reading:
It’s the usual story. The usual stories. […]. Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth. Then comes the mouldy old Rachel and Leah stuff we had drummed into us at the Centre. Give me children, or else I die.[…] And so on and so forth. We had it read to us every breakfast […]. (34)
The fact that the Handmaids have to submit to a patriarchal regime, where they are treated as objects and reduced to their procreative function, is condoned by the regime by using the Old Testament as an excuse. To underline the “religiousness” of their procreative role in society, the
Handmaids even have to look “religious”. In their red, long dresses and their white “wings”, they look like nuns, like a “Sister dipped in blood”, as Offred says. (35) They even have to live like nuns as they sleep in small rooms without mirrors and are never allowed to go outside without the company of another Handmaid. (36) Even the fact that the Commanders’ Wives are present at the impregnation ceremony and at the event of a birth (in both events, the handmaid is lying on the Wife’s stomach with the Wife’s knees around her) is taken from Rachel’s words “she shall bear upon my knees”.
(37) Rachel’s statement “Give me children or else I die!” (38), which Offred repeats in her head at the monthly check-up, indeed has “more than one meaning to it”. (39) Like Hagar, who is sent away, (40) a Handmaid who fails to conceive after she has been sent to three households is sent to the
Colonies, where she will die eventually. (41)
Offred’s and the other Handmaids’ fate stresses the hypocrisy of a regime that pretends to be based on religious and godly principles, but in “reality” is a system that controls and suppresses its citizens, especially women, and treats women and dissidents as objects. It is a place that claims to function on the basis of Christianity but that in fact lacks spirituality and morality.
Instead it is based on terror and fear, which is justified by the archaic patriarchal language of the Old Testament. The Word of the Bible is distorted and used as an instrument for the control of society.
By describing how the fundamentalist state of Gilead uses the Bible in order to justify their ideology, Atwood shows how ambiguous language is and how texts can always be interpreted in various ways. She stresses how dangerous it is to approach a text only in the literal sense or in a way that only allows one single truth. As Janet Larson says: “[…] Atwood shows that a mode of

interpretation that denies readings other than the literal is not only textually irresponsible but a social menace.” (42)
Atwood demonstrates that every interpretation of a text, no matter if it is the
Bible or a novel or any other kind of text, is subjective. Therefore it is always possible that a text is interpreted inadequately and used in a dangerous way.
Her novel is a warning about how easily people can be manipulated especially by language. As the use of archaic, biblical language is often a characteristic of extreme sects or fundamentalist groups, this warning is also directed towards current trends in our society, such as the rise of right-wing fundamentalist movements in general or the American New Right in particular who have racist and anti-homosexual/-feminist concepts and a strong reference to Puritan beliefs and practices. This resemblance between
Puritanism and the society described in Atwood’s novel, as well as the reference to Puritan beliefs and practices that is made by American fundamentalist groups, is another important aspect that could be discussed in class.
If Atwood’s novel is interpreted in this way, and if it is used for classroom discussion, it is very important to include an analysis of the biblical influences and allusions that run through the novel in order to encourage thoughts about fundamentalist ideas and the use of dogmas.
Timeline
Offred’s birth - Offred’s thirty-seven-year-old feminist mother (mid-1950s) disdains her mate, a useless man with memo rable blue eyes who lives on the coast.
late 1950s - At age four, Offred receives a pop-up book of reproductive organs. A year later, Offred and her mother attend a Saturday rally and porno graphic magazine burning in the park. A par ticipant gives Offred a magazine to burn.
late 1960s - At age fourteen or fifteen, Offred resents the illegal activities of her mother and other radi cal feminists.
mid-1970s - During their college years, Offred and Moira become friends.
late 1970s - Before Luke’s divorce, he and Offred enjoy a premarital affair and meet in a hotel for after noon trysts. During Offred’s pregnancy, she and
Luke lie in bed and monitor their unborn child’s movements.
early to mid-1980s - In September of Offred’s daughter’s third or fourth year, repressive measures halt Pornomarts, Feels on Wheels, and Bun-Dle
Buggies and cancel Offred’s Compunumber. These events, prefaced by the
President’s Day Massacre and suspension of the Constitution, comprise a hostile fundamentalist takeover—the beginning of early Gilead.

2:00 p.m. the next day - Offred and other women are fired from their the jobs. Offred’s mother disappears.
mid-1980s - In September of Offred’s daughter’s fifth year, Luke, Offred, and the child attempt to flee Gilead and cross the Canadian border. Offred and the child run through the woods and are apprehended and separated by unidentified pursuers. Luke’s fate is unknown.
two weeks after - Janine is ridiculed as a crybaby. Offred Offred’s placement at will take part in the ritual of public the Rachel and Leah humiliation.Re-Education Center
a week later - The authorities bring Moira to the Center for Handmaid indoctrination. Bruises suggest that she resisted arrest.
four days later - Moira and Offred make tentative contact and arrange a meeting in the end stall of the wash room at 2:30 p.m.
2:30 p.m. - Janine allows a group session to turn her testimony of gang rape at age fourteen into a unanimous accusation of seduction and criminality for having an abortion. Janine claims to have deserved the pain.
late winter or early - After service to a bald-haired man, Offred spring of
Offred’s is reassigned to the Commander.thirty-third year
three days later - Offred discovers a Latin inscription scratched into a closet wall by the former Offred.
three weeks after - Offred’s Handmaid companion disappears; arrival at the a second Ofglen takes her place. Commander’s home
May - Offred discovers the Commander snooping near her room. She undergoes a mating ceremony and returns to the sitting room to steal something. Nick interrupts her and informs her that the Commander wants to see her the next night.
the next day - Ofwarren gives birth to Angela. At nine o’clock that evening,
Offred goes to the Commander’s office and plays Scrabble. Back in her room, she fights hysteria and sleeps in the closet.
the next morning - Cora finds Offred in the closet and fears she has committed suicide.
end of the first year - Offred observes her first Salvaging.
July of Offred’s - Offred takes part in a Prayvaganza and joins

third year at the - The Commander at the nightclub, where she
Commander’s house reunites with Moira for the last time. Moira divulges that
Offred’s mother, an Unwoman, works in the Colonies. Offred and the
Commander take a room, where they have intercourse. After midnight,
Offred, returned to the Commander’s house, follows Serena through the dark kitchen and out to Nick’s quarters for forbidden sex.
high summer - Offred takes part in a Salvaging, where three women are hanged and a man is torn to bits. That afternoon, the second Ofglen is replaced by a new Ofglen, who divulges that her predecessor hanged herself after seeing the van coming for her. Serena stops Offred at the steps and accuses her of sluttish behavior with the Commander.
that night - Nick bursts into Offred’s room and urges her to accompany two men in a black van. The Commander objects and is, according to a twentysecond-century scholar’s theory, later executed for harboring a subversive
(Nick).
middle Gilead - Authorities grow more cautious about liberalism.
June 25, 2195 - At the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, Professor
James Darcy Pieixoto, a British archivist from Cambridge University, explains how Offred’s cassette tapes were unearthed in Bangor, Maine, and pieced together into a puzzling and incomplete retelling of her ordeal.
Things to think about…
 Contemporary fable of prophecy and warning
 Told like a diary or letter
 Offred’s story of resistance and oppression
 Fragmented narrative – so we begin in a state of bewilderment o This disorientation is deliberate as Atwood challenges the reader to think about Offred’s situation and our own
 The four key themes of o feminism o politics o religion o environmental issues
 ‘Night’ recurs as a section heading 7 times. It always signals ‘time out’ when Offred’s life is not under glaring public scrutiny & when she can thus escape into her private world of memory and desire

Key Sections
Chapter 5 – First impressions of Gilead
Chapter 9 – Offred exploring the room; reminiscing of hotels; Luke
Chapter 13 – My body as an instrument
Chapter 16 – “The ceremony”
Chapter 23 – A discussion of women in Gilead; prior to Offred meeting The
Commander in his study for the first time – Scrabble!
Chapter 24 – Offred’s thoughts after meeting The Commander in his study for the first time
Chapter 25 – Offred as a heroine of romance
Chapter 35 – Serena Joy shows Offred a photo of her daughter
Chapter 37 – “You can’t cheat nature”; Jezebels
Chapter 38 – Moira’s resignation to the regime – her acceptance of her role in Gilead
Chapter 41 - Offred’s pain at remembering

Sources
The information for these notes was taken from the following sites. Obviously not all of the material in them was included, so you may want to check them out for more information.
 http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/
 http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-122.html
 http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/canada/handmaid.html
 http://www.heliweb.de/telic/breuer.htm
 http://www.webenglishteacher.com/atwood.html
 http://wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/handmaid.html
 E-notes http://www.enotes.com/handmaids-tale/
 York Notes Advanced, Longman, 1998
 www.library.utoronto.ca/fisher/atwood

A Handmaid's Tale Essay/Study Questions
- Discuss the use of language in Gilead. How could it be dangerous?
- Is this society stable or not? What is a destabilizing influence in it?
- How does this society keep women in check?
- Is Serena Joy in power or out of power?
- Words can limit and can add new connotations. What words are used here that have new meanings? Why doesn't she explain all of them as they occur?
- What relation does the Sufi proverb (the epigraph) have to the book?
- Does Offred hate the Commander? Explain.
- What does the latin phrase mean? Does it apply to her?
- What does "Context is all" mean?
- Does Offred fight or survive?
- How does Gilead control women? What techniques are used?
- Why were some of the women content to live the life they were living?
- One critic has said that the loosening of the rules that occurred to Offred
(cribbage, daughter’s photo, Nick) in reality bonded her tighter to the society. Explain.
- What questions does the epilogue answer? What new ones does it pose?
How is the world of the epilogue a "utopia"?
- Is Offred a heroine? Discuss
- There are many ceremonies in Gilead. Why are they so important to the society?
- Apply to the well-ordered society Aunt Lydia’s dictum: “There is more than one kind of freedom ... freedom to and freedom from.” In Gilead, what dividing lines separate freedom from fascism, patriotism from zealotry, duty from subservience, godliness from fanaticism?
- Contrast the coping mechanisms of Moira and Offred, particularly defiance, rebellion, escape, assertiveness, sexual indulgence, smoking, drugs, networking, and withdrawal.

- Study the stratification of female society in Gilead. Note the duties and significance of Unwomen, Wives, Daughters, Econowives, Handmaids,
Marthas, and Aunts.
- How does The Handmaid’s Tale depict the intersection between politics and sexual reproduction? How is Gilead’s political order defined by this intersection, and how does it affect the lives of women?
- How does Gilead create and use a new vocabulary to buttress its totalitarian order?
- Discuss the role of the Aunts and of Serena Joy in the novel. How do they relate to other women, and how does this make them fit into the hierarchy of
Gilead?
- Is the Commander a sympathetic character, a monster, or both?
- Is Atwood’s novel ultimately a feminist work of literature, or does it offer a critique of feminism?
- What role does Moira play in the novel? How does her significance change as the story progresses?
- Discuss the various ways in which Atwood uses setting and environment to highlight Gilead’s oppression.
- What extra dimension do the Historical Notes add to the story?
- “From fear to defiance.” Is that a correct characterization of Offred’s progress in the novel?
- How does the Gilead regime use language, especially Biblical language, to solidify its power?
- Throughout The Handmaid's Tale Offred considers the multiple meanings and connotations of specific words. What might Atwood be suggesting about the flexibility or lack of specificity of language? What does this obsession with words convey about Offred's character or situation?
- How does the Gileadean government use the constant potential of surveillance to keep its citizens in line? Do you think Offred should have taken more risks to better her situation, or was she doing the best she could given the circumstances?
- In an interview, Atwood said that "This is a book about what happens when certain casually held attitudes about women are taken to their logical conclusions. For example, I explore a number of conservative opinions still held by many - such as a woman's place is in the home. And also certain

feminist pronouncements - women prefer the company of other women, for example. Take these beliefs to their logical ends and see what happens."
How does the world of Gilead contain elements of extremely conservative, religious beliefs, as well as elements of more liberal, feminist beliefs? Do you think Atwood accomplished her goal?
- One of the main goals of the Gilead Regime seems to be to control and regulate sex and sexuality. Do you think they succeed? Are sexual relations more ordered and "normalized" under the new regime?
- The Handmaid's Tale is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and most of the buildings and landmarks mentioned throughout the novel are parts of
Harvard University. Why might Atwood have chosen a major university as the headquarters of this new regime? In your answer, consider the relationship between knowledge and control.
- In his keynote speech, Professor Pieixoto tells his audience that "we must be cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadeans" because
"we have learned by now that such judgments are of necessity culturespecific." Do you agree? Explain your critique or defense of the Gileadean rule.
- Why is the hotel where Moira is kept known as "Jezebel's"? How does this name fit in with the Gileadean's tendency to place the primary responsibility on women for any sexual problems or deviancy?
- Atwood chose not to follow a strictly chronological pattern in the telling of
Offred's story. Why do you think she did so? What does it add and what are its disadvantages?
- Aunt Lydia says to the Handmaid-trainees, “We were a society dying of too much choice.” How does this relate to her distinction between freedom from and freedom to? What freedoms does Gilead claim to be providing its citizens? What freedoms are being denied?
- Consider the naming of the Handmaids, ‘Offred’, ;Ofwarren’, and ‘Ofglen’, for example. What does this reveal about the values and power dynamics of
Gilead? What parallels can be made between the naming system of their society and the naming of women in our society?
- Each category of women in Gilead is resentful of the others. Explain the reasons for this resentment and discuss its ultimate effect.
- How does Gilead’s policing of language help to control the thoughts of its citizens? For example, why is Offred so shocked when her doctor uses the word ‘sterile’ in reference to men?

- Offred’s narration is made up of a confusing mix of details from the present tense action of the novel and details from her various memories of the past.
In what ways are her memories connected to what is happening to her at the
Commander’s house? Why has Atwood chosen a narrative style that so frequently blurs distinctions between present and past?
- Discuss ways in which Gilead demonstrates that it is a patriarchal misogynic society, and its justification for this.
- Discuss the various ways Gilead turns its people’s anger and frustration away from the regime and onto some safe target a scapegoat.
- Sexism and misogyny exist when women are not granted the same rights as men, when women are restricted to the domestic sphere, and when women are valued primarily for their functionality rather than their humanness. Consider the way sexism and misogyny share the culture of
Gilead as well as societies that precede and follow it.
- In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood presents a first person narrator who chronicles her experiences under an extremely oppressive, misogynistic regime. Explore the development of this character during the course of her narrative. Does she move from fear and intimidation to the liberation of her will, or is the character formation more complicated in this text?

: Dystopic fiction
: Social critique e.g. 1980s political fable. Atwood studied clippings of papers, mags, as well as documents by Greenpeace, Amnesty Int, also interested in issues in Latin America, Iran, Philippines, and history like the Nazi regime of human reproduction. Atwood contended that these societies:
‘They suppress most men, but all women, and so it is in Gilead.’
: A Handmaid serves a patriarch for sex + reproduction
: Suppression of women
: Eyes = identity = scrutiny
The red habits=Blood, fertility, sexual sin
: Angels, Eyes, the doctor = positions of authority
: in future in U.S.
Bible based religion as an excuse for the suppression of the majority of pop.
Gilead: taken from Old Testament, patriarchal society
: 17 th c Puritanism = Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Atwood had a relative who was hanged for witchcraft
Epigraph: the dislocated opening emphasises the confusion and fear which characterize any totalitarian state i.e. Gilead
: Angels = Angels of Light, Aunts
: Offred: fictive autobiography off = slaves off Glen, Fred,
Charles,
: ‘night’ 7 times = ‘time out’ when Offred life is not under scrutiny and enters private world of memory and desire
: AD2195 her fate remind a mystery
‘deny none of it’ = Uni of Denay, nunavit