An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The retainers rehearsal Marg atomic publication 18t Atwood Context Marg atomic number 18t Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her first book of poetry in 1961 plot of ground aid the University of Toronto. She later received degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a c atomic number 18er in teaching at the university level. Her first fable, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 to wide acclaim. Atwood proceed teaching as her literary c atomic number 18er blos any(prenominal)d. She has lectu rosy widely and has served as a writer-inresidence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.Atwood wrote The handmaids Tale in western United States Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a silk hat-seller. The Handmaids Tale f exclusivelys squarely within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or dystopian novels, exemplif ied by classics resembling Aldous Huxleys Brave parvenue World and George Orwells 1984. Novels in this genre present imagined worlds and societies that are non ideals, merely instead are terrifying or restrictive. Atwoods novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia.She wrote it shortly afterward 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 ghostly conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the get offual innovation of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing world-beater of this religious right heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in front decades would be reversed. In The Handmaids Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reverting of womens rights.In the novels nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has taken power and turned the knowledgea ble revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a hostel inst in on the wholeed on a return to traditional determine and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men. What feminists withdrawed the great triumphs of the 1970s predictly, widespread access to contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing governmental influence of female voters get downhearted all been undone. Women in Gilead are non merely forbidden to vote, they are forbidden to read or write.Atwoods novel in homogeneous manner paints a picture of a world undone by taint and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears ab pop forth declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear power, and -environmental degradation. Some of the novels concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the political goals of Americas religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaids Tale re mains one of the most powerful recent portrayals of a undemocratic society, and one of the a couple of(prenominal) dystopian novels to examine in detail the intersection of politics and sex activity.The novels exploration of the controversial politics of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwoods novel a readership well into the twenty-first century. Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their daughter, Jess. Her most recent novel, The Blind Assassin, won Great Britains Booker Prize for literature in 2000. bandage Overview Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic terra firma that has replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are charge to rove on children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving.Offred serves the air force officer and his wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer and advocate for traditional values. Offred is non the narrators real nameHa ndmaid names consist of the word of followed by the name of the Handmaids commander. every(prenominal) month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal, wordless sex with the commanding officer while Serena sits behind her, confirming her hands. Offreds freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted.She stub leave the theatre of operations hardly on shopping trips, the door to her populate privy non be completely shut, and the Eyes, Gileads secret police force, watch her every public move. As Offred regularizes the written account of her daily life, she oft slips into flashbacks, from which the reader tidy sum reconstruct the counterbalancets leading up to the experiencening of the novel. In the old world, out front Gilead, Offred had an affair with Luke, a marital man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child together. Offreds mother was a single mother and feminist activist. Offreds b est friend, Moira, was fiercely independent.The architects of Gilead began their prepare to power in an age of readily available pornography, prostitution, and violence against womenwhen pollution and chemical spills led to declining fertility rates. exploitation the military, they assassinated the president and members of Congress and launched a coup, claiming that they were taking power temporarily. They cracked d stimulate on womens rights, forbidding women to hold property or jobs. Offred and Luke took their daughter and attempted to flee across the ring into Canada, but they were caught and separated from one another, and Offred has seen neither her husband nor her daughter since. later on her capture, Offreds marriage was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and she was sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, called the rubicund Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were indoctrinated into Gileads ideology in preparation for becoming Handmaids. aun tie Lydia supervised the women, giving speeches extolling Gileads beliefs that women should be subservient to men and solely concerned with hurting children. Aunt Lydia also argued that such a social rove ultimately offers women more than respect and safety than the old, pre-Gilead society offered them.Moira is brought to the Red Center, but she flyings, and Offred does not bonk what compels of her. Once assigned to the commanding officers domicile, Offreds life settles into a restrictive routine. She takes shopping trips with Ofglen, another Handmaid, and they dish the dirt the Wall outside what used to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She must visit the doctor frequently to be checked for disease and other complications, and she must endure the Ceremony, in which the Commander reads to the household from the Bible, thitherfore goes to the bed path, where his married woman and Offred wait for him, and has sex with Offred.The first break from her r outine occurs when she visits the doctor and he offers to have sex with her to get her pregnant, suggesting that her Commander is probably infertile. She refuses. The doctor makes her uneasy, but his proposition is too wasteshe could be sent a manner if caught. After a Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, Nick, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him regularly. They shrink from scratch (which is forbidden, since women are not allowed to read), and he lets her look at old magazines like Vogue.At the end of these secret meetings, he asks her to kiss him. During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is a member of Mayday, an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony feels different and less impersonal now that she knows the Commander. Their night beat conversations begin to touch on the virgin order that the Commander and his fellow leaders have created in Gilead. When Offred admits how unhappy she is, the Commander remarks, You cant make an omelette without breaking eggs. After roughly time has gone by without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred have sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commanders. Serena promises to bring Offred a picture of her daughter if she sleeps with Nick, and Offred realizes that Serena has al federal agencys known the where approximatelys of Offreds daughter. The same night that Offred is to sleep with Nick, the Commander secretly takes her out to a club called Jezebels, where the Commanders mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira on the job(p) there. The two women meet in a fundament, and Offred learns that Moira was captured salutary before she crossed the border.She chose life in Jezebels over being sent to the Colonies, where most political prisoners and dangerous people are sent. After that night at Jezebels, Offred asserts, sh e never sees Moira again. The Commander takes Offred upstairs after a hardly a(prenominal) hours, and they have sex in what used to be a hotel room. She tries to feign passion. Soon after Offred returns from Jezebels, late at night, Serena arrives and tells Offred to go to Nicks room. Offred and Nick have sex. Soon they begin to sleep together frequently, without anyones knowledge.Offred becomes caught up in the affair and ignores Ofglens requests that she gather information from the Commander for Mayday. One day, all the Handmaids take part in a group execution of a divinatory rapist, supervised by Aunt Lydia. Ofglen strikes the first blow. Later, she tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery. Shortly thereafter, Offred goes out shopping, and a raw(a) Ofglen meets her. This refreshed woman is not part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the secret police coming for her.At home, Serena has make up out about Offreds trip to Jezebels, and she sends her to her room, promising punishment. Offred waits there, and she sees a black van from the Eyes approach. Then Nick comes in and tells her that the Eyes are authentically Mayday members who have come to save her. Offred leaves with them, over the Commanders futile objections, on her way either to prison or to freedomshe does not know which. The novel closes with an epilogue from 2195, after Gilead has fallen, written in the form of a lecture given by Professor Pieixoto. He explains the formation and customs of Gilead in objective, analytical language.He discusses the deduction of Offreds tosh, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick arranged Offreds escape but that her fate after that is unknown. She could have escaped to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured. Character List Offred The narrator and protagonist of The Handmaids Tale. Offred be fore bargaineds to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite, barren couples. Handmaids show which Commander owns them by adopting their Commanders names, such as Fred, and preceding them with Of. Offred intends her real name but never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks to a time in which she had a daughter and a husband named Luke. The cruel physical and psychological burdens of her daily life in Gilead torment her and propagate her narrative. Read an in-depth analysis of Offred. The Commander The Commander is the head of the household where Offred works as a Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox kinship with Offred, secretly playing Scrabble with her in his study at night.He a good deal seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes finds that she likes him in spite of herself. He almost seems a victim of Gilead, making the best of a society he opposes. However, we learn from various clues and from t he epilogue that the Commander was actually involved in designing and establishing Gilead. Read an in-depth analysis of The Commander. Serena Joy The Commanders Wife, Serena worked in pre-Gilead days as a gospel singer, then as an anti-feminist activist and crusader for traditional values. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, yet she is desperately unhappy. Serenas unhappiness shows that her restrictive, male-dominated society cannot bring happiness even to its most pampered and powerful women. Serena jealously guards her claims to status and behaves cruelly toward the Handmaids in her household. Read an in-depth analysis of Serena Joy. Moira Offreds best friend from college, Moira is a lesbian and a staunch feminist she embodies female resourcefulness and independence. Her defiant nature contrasts starkly with the behavior of the other women in the novel.Rather than passively accept her fate as a Handmaid, she makes several escape attempts and finally manag es to get away from the Red Center. However, she is caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira works as a prostitute in a club for the Commanders. At the club, Moira seems resigned to her fate, which suggests that a totalitarian society can grind down and crush even the most resourceful and independent people. Read an in-depth analysis of Moira. Aunt Lydia The Aunts are the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates.Aunt Lydia works at the Red Center, the re? education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids. Although she appears solitary(prenominal) in Offreds flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her instructions haunt Offred in her daily life. Aunt Lydias slogans and maxims drum the ideology of the new society into heads of the women, until even those like Offred, women who do not truly believe in the ideology, hear Gileads words echoing in their heads. Nick Nick is a Guardian, a dependent officer of Gilead assigned to the Commanders home, where he works as a gardener and chauffeur.He and Offred have a sexual chemistry that they get to sate when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter between them in an effort to get Offred pregnant. After sleeping together once, they begin a covert sexual affair. Nick is not just a Guardian he may work either as a member of the Eyes, Gileads secret police, or as a member of the underground Mayday resistance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offreds escape from the Commanders home, but we do not know whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the resistance.Ofglen Another Handmaid who is Offreds shopping partner and a member of the subversive Mayday underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself sort of than face torture and reveal the names of her co-conspirators. Cora Cora works as a servant in the Commanders household. She belongs to the class of Marthas, infertile women who do not qualify for the high status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. Cora seems more content with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita.She hopes that Offred will be able to conceive, because then she will have a hand in raising a child. Janine Offred knows Janine from their time at the Red Center. After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformedan Unbabyand there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, always ensnare to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all allowance figures.Offred holds Janine in contempt for taking the easy way out. Luke In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to another woman, then got a divorce and became Offreds husband. When Gilead com es to power, he attempts to escape to Canada with Offred and their daughter, but they are captured. He is separated from Offred, and the couple never see one another again. The kind of love they plowshared is prohibited in Gilead, and Offreds memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, passionless state of male-female relations in the new society.Offreds mother Offred remembers her mother in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead worldshe was a single parent and a feminist activist. One day during her education at the Red Center, Offred sees a video of her mother as a young woman, yelling and carrying a banner in an anti-rape march called Take Back the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead want to seal of approval out. Aunt Elizabeth Aunt Elizabeth is one of the Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunts equal during her escape from the Red Center. Rita A Martha, or domestic servant, in the Commanders household.She seems less content with her lo t than Cora, the other Martha working there. Professor Pieixoto The guest speaker at the symposium that takes place in the epilogue to The Handmaids Tale. He and another academic, working at a university in the year 2195, transcribed Offreds recorded narrative his lecture details the historical significance of the story that we have just read. 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 smell out of humora graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilea d, 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 discontinues, she submits outwardly.She is hardly a feminist champion she had always felt uncomfortable with her mothers activism, and her pre-Gilead family 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 womens lib won and now pays the price. The Commander The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is Offreds Commander and the immediate agent of her onerousness. As a laminitis 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 Offreds evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life.At times, his unhappiness and pauperization for companionship make him seem as much a prisoner of Gileads strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling intellect for this man. Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself athletic supportered 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 doesnt seem to care that they put Offred at terrible risk, a fact of whic h he must be aware, given that the previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were discovered. The Commanders moral blindness, apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of Gilead, are highlighted by his and Offreds visit to Jezebels. The club, a place where the elite men of the society can hire in recreational extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that runs through Gileadean society.Offreds 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 cook up 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 h e, like the Nazi guard, is a monster. Serena JoyThough Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the fundamental law of the Gileadean state, her bitterness at the outcomebeing confined to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a Handmaidsuggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes index not enjoy getting their way as much as they believe they would. Serenas 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 effect in Serenas 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 Offreds pregnancy she gets to bear the baby. Furthermore, Serenas offer to show Offred a pic ture of her addled daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always known of Offreds daughters whereabouts. Not unaccompanied has she cruelly concealed this knowledge, she is willing to exploit Offreds loss of a child in order to get an infant of her own.Serenas lack of sympathy makes her the perfect tool for Gileads 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, Moiras 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 Offreds 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 G ilead 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 escapestaking off her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Auntsymbolizes her rejection of Gileads 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 ones fate that most of the Handmaids adopt.When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebels, 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. Themes, Motifs & Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Womens Bodies as Political Instruments Because G ilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically ecreased birthrates, the states entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built most a single goal control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of womens 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 Gileads 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 novels 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 seek s 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 demand of the new societys elite.Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are delineate 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. at that place 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 states repression of its subjects and its perversion of language ( new-fashionedspeak in George Orwells 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaids Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its control over womens 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 locution that it is truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. Offreds complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the justness 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 Gileads 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 connatural 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, pass on a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same draw for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwoods 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. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes. Rape and Sexual Violence Sexual violence, oddly against women, pervades The Handmaids 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 protect 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 blunt hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the re sistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebels, 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 employ for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracya government in which there is no separation between state and devotionand its official vocabulary incorporates religious oral communication 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 credence soldiers are Angels and the Commanders are officially Commanders of the Faithful. entirely 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. regime and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan deity is a National Resource predominates. Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist IdeologiesAlthough The Handmaids 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 Offreds 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 al so 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 Atwoods gentle criticism of the feminist go away, her real target is the religious right. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Cambridge, Massachusetts The center of Gileads 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 Americas first religious and intolerant societythe prude New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient prude church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a linguistic context symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heir s in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation. Harvard UniversityGilead has transformed Harvards buildings into a hands center run by the Eyes, Gileads secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs slightly 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 HabitsThe red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the castes 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 Gileads secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbol ize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gileads theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same. Chapters 13 Summary Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on armament cots in a gymnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrol with electric cattle prods hanging from their leather belts, and the women, forbidden to speak aloud, whisper without attracting attention.Twice daily, the women walk in the former football field, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Armed guards called Angels patrol outside. While the women take their walks, the Angels stand outside the fence with their backs to the women. The women long for the Angels to turn and see them. They imagine that if the men looked at them or talked to them, they could use their bodies to make a deal. The narrator describes lying in bed at night, gently exchanging names with the other w omen. Summary Chapter 2The scene changes, and the story shifts from the past tense to the present tense. Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a pillow, a inclose picture, and a braided rug. There is no glass in the room, not even over the framed picture. The window does not open completely, and the windowpane is shatterproof. There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door does not lock or even shut completely. Looking around, Offred remembers how Aunt Lydia told her to consider her circumstances a privilege, not a prison.Handmaids, to which group the narrator belongs, dress entirely in red, except for the white wings framing their faces. Household servants, called Marthas, survive green uniforms. Wives wear blue uniforms. Offred often secretly listens to Rita and Cora, the Marthas who work in the house where she lives. Once, she hears Rita state that she would never debase herself as someone in Offreds position must. Cora replies that Offred works for all the women, and that if she (Cora) were younger and had not gotten her tubes tied, she could have been in Offreds situation. Offred wishes she could alk to them, but Marthas are not supposed to develop relationships with Handmaids. She wishes that she could share inflict like they dogossip about how one Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a knitting molest out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander with toilet cleaner. Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She collects from Rita the tokens that serve as currency. Each token bears an image of what it will purchase twelve eggs, cheese, and a steak. Summary Chapter 3 On her way out, Offred looks around for the Commanders Wife but does not see her.The Commanders Wife has a garden, and she knits constantly. All the Wives knit scarves for the Angels at the front lines, but the Commanders Wife is a particularly skilled knitter. Offred wonders if the scarves actually get used, or if they just give the Wives something to do. She remembers arriving at the Commanders house for the first time, after the two couples to which she was previously assigned didnt work out. One of the Wives in an in the first place posting secluded herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new Commanders Wife would be different.On the first day, her new mistress told her to stay out of her sight as much as possible, and to avoid making trouble. As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a black-market item. Handmaids, Offred notes, are forbidden coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Then the Wife reminded Offred that the Commander is her husband, permanently and forever. Its one of the things we fought for, she said, looking away. Suddenly, Offred recognized her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead soprano from Growing Souls Gospel Hour, a Sunday-morning religious syllabus that aired when Offred was a child. Analysis Chapters 15The Handmaids Tale plunges immediat ely into an unfamiliar, unexplained world, using unfamiliar terms like Handmaid, Angel, and Commander that only come to make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers information about her past and the world in which she lives, often narrating through flashbacks. She narrates these flashbacks in the past tense, which distinguishes them from the main body of the story, which she tells in the present tense. The first scene, in the gymnasium, is a flashback, as are Offreds memories of the Marthas gossip and her first meeting with the Commanders Wife.Although at this point we do not know what the gymnasium signifies, or why the narrator and other women lived there, we do gather some information from the legal brief first chapter. The women in the gymnasium live under the constant surveillance of the Angels and the Aunts, and they cannot interact with one another. They seem to inhabit a kind of prison. Offred likens the gym to a palimpsest, a parchment either erased and wr itten on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history high train girls going to basketball games and dances wearing miniskirts, then pants, then green hair.Likening the gym to a palimpsest also suggests that the society Offred now inhabits has been superimposed on a previous society, and traces of the old linger beneath the new. In Chapter 2, Offred sits in a room that seems at first like a pleasant change from harsh asynchronous transfer mode of the gymnasium. However, her description of her room demonstrates that the same rigid, controlling structures that ruled the gym continue to constrict her in this house. The room is like a prison in which all means of defense, or escape by suicide or flight, have been removed.She wonders if women everywhere get issued exactly the same sheets and curtains, which underlines the idea that the room is like a government-ordered prison. We do not know yet what purpose Offred serves in the house, although it seems to be sexualCora comments that she could have done Offreds work if she hadnt gotten her tubes tied, which implies that Offreds function is reproductive. Serena Joys coldness to Offred makes it plain that she considers Offred a threat, or at least an annoyance. We do know from Offreds name that she, like all Handmaids, is considered state property.Handmaids names simply reflect which Commander owns them. Of Fred, Of Warren, and Of Glen get collapsed into Offred, Ofwarren, and Ofglen. The names make more sense when preceded by the word Property Property Offred, for example. Thus, every time the women hear their names, they are reminded that they are no more than property. These early chapters establish the novels style, which is characterized by considerable physical description. The narrator devotes attention to the features of the gym, the Commanders house, and Serena Joys pinched face.Offred tells the story in nonlinear fashion, following the temporal lea ps of her own mind. The narrative goes where her thoughts take itone moment to the present, in the Commanders house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the United States as it exists in Offreds memory. We do not have the sense, as in some first-person narratives, that Offred is composing this story from a distanced vantage point, reflecting back on her past. Rather, all of her thoughts have a quality of immediacy. We are there with Offred as she goes about her daily life, and as she slips out of the present and thinks about her past.Chapters 46 Summary Chapter 4 As she leaves the house to go shopping, Offred come ups Nick, a Guardian of the Faith, washing the Commanders car. Nick lives above the garage. He winks at Offredan offense against -decorum but she ignores him, fearing that he may be an Eye, a recognize assigned to test her. She waits at the corner for Ofglen, another Handmaid with whom Offred will do her shopping. The Handmaids always travel in pairs when outside. Ofglen arrives, and they exchange greetings, careful not to say anything that isnt strictly orthodox.Ofglen says that she has heard the war is going well, and that the army recently defeated a group of Baptist rebels. Praise be, Offred responds. They reach a checkpoint manned by two young Guardians. The Guardians serve as a routine police force and do menial labor. They are men too young, too old, or just generally unfit for the army. Young Guardians, such as these, can be dangerous because they are frequently more fanatical or noisome than older guards. These young Guardians recently shot a Martha as she fumbled for her pass, because they thought she was a man in disguise carrying a bomb.Offred heard Rita and Cora talking about the shooting. Rita was angry, but Cora seemed to accept the shooting as the price one pays for safety. At the checkpoint, Offred subtly flirts with one of the Guardians by making eye contact, cherishing this small infraction against the rules . She considers how sexy the young men must be, since they cannot marry without permission, masturbation is a sin, and pornographic magazines and films are now forbidden. The Guardians can only hope to become Angels, when they will be allowed to take a wife and perhaps eventually get a Handmaid.This marks the first time in the novel we hear the word Handmaid used. Summary Chapter 5 In town, Ofglen and Offred wait in line at the shops. We learn the name of this new society The Republic of Gilead. Offred remembers the pre-Gilead days, when women were not protected they had to keep their doors closed to strangers and ignore catcalls on the street. Now no one whistles at women as they walk no one touches them or talks to them. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that more than one kind of freedom exists, and that in the days of anarchy, it was freedom to.Now you are being given freedom from. The women shop at stores known by names like All Flesh and Milk and Honey. Pictures of meat o r fruit mark the stores, rather than lettered signs, because they decided that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us. A Handmaid in the late stages of pregnancy enters the store and raises a flurry of excitement. Offred recognizes her from the Red Center. She used to be known as Janine, and she was one of Aunt Lydias favorites. Now her name is Ofwarren. Offred senses that Janine went shopping just so she could show off her pregnancy.Offred thinks of her husband, Luke, and their daughter, and the life they led before Gilead existed. She remembers a prosaic detail from their commonplace life together she used to store plastic shopping bags under the sink, which annoyed Luke, who worried that their daughter would get one of the bags caught over her head. She remembers feeling wicked for her carelessness. Offred and Ofglen finish their shopping and go out to the sidewalk, where they encounter a group of Japanese tourists and their interpreter. The tourists want to t ake a photograph, but Offred says no.Many of the interpreters are Eyes, and Handmaids must not appear immodest. Offred and Ofglen marvel at the womens exposed legs, high heels, and polished toenails. The tourists ask if they are happy, and since Ofglen does not answer, Offred replies that they are very happy. Summary Chapter 6 This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. (See Important Quotations Explained) As they return from shopping, Ofglen suggests they take the long way and pass by the church. It is an old building, decorated inside with paintings of what seem to be Puritans from the colonial era.Now the former church is kept as a museum. Offred describes a nigh boathouse, old dormitories, a football stadium, and redbrick sidewalks. Atwood implies that Offred is walking across what used to be the campus of Harvard University. Across the street from the church sits the Wall, where the administration hang the bodies of executed crimi nals as examples to the rest of the Republic of Gilead. The authorities cover the mens heads with bags. One of the bags looks painted with a red smile where the blood has seeped through.All of the six corpses wear signs around their necks picturing fetuses, signaling that they were executed for performing abortions before Gilead came into existence. Although their actions were legal at the time, their crimes are being punished retroactively. Offred feels relieved that none of the bodies could be Lukes, since he was not a doctor. As she stares at the bodies, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia telling them that soon their new life would seem ordinary. Analysis Chapters 46 The theocratic nature of Offreds society, the name of which we learn for the first time in these chapters, becomes clear during her shopping trip.A theocracy exists when there is no separation between church and state, and a single religion dominates all aspects of life. In Gilead, state and religion are inseparable. The of ficial language of Gilead uses many biblical terms, from the various ranks that men hold (Angels, Guardians of the Faith, Commanders of the Faith, the Eyes of God), to the stores where Offred and Ofglen shop (Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes), to the names of automobiles (Behemoth, Whirlwind, Chariot). The very name Gilead refers to a location in ancient Israel. The name also recalls a line from the Book of Psalms there is a balm in Gilead. This phrase, we realize later, has been transformed into a kind of national motto. Atwood does not describe the exact details of Gileads state religion. In Chapter 2, Offred describes her room as a return to traditional values. The religious right in America uses the phrase traditional values, so Atwood seems to link the values of this dystopic society to the values of the Protestant Christian religious right in America. Gilead seems more Protestant than anything else, but its brand of Christianity pays far more attention to the Old Testament than the New Testament.The religious justification for having Handmaids, for instance, is taken from the Book of Genesis. We learn that neither Catholics nor Jews are welcome in Gilead. The former must convert, while the latter must emigrate to Israel or renounce their Judaism. Atwood seems less interested in religion than in the intersection between religion, politics, and sex. The Handmaids Tale explores the political oppression of women, carried out in the name of God but in large part motivated by a desire to control womens bodies.Gilead sees womens sexuality as dangerous women must cover themselves from head to toe, for example, and not reveal their sexual attractions. When Offred attracts the Guardians, she feels this ability to inspire sexual attraction is the only power she retains. Every other privilege is stripped away, down to the very act of version, which is forbidden. Women are not even allowed to read store signs. By controlling womens minds, by not allowin g them to read, the authorities more easily control womens bodies. The patriarchs of Gilead want to control womens bodies, their sex lives, and their reproductive rights.The bodies of slain abortionists on the Wall hammering home the point feminists believe that women must have abortion rights in order to control their own bodies, and in Gilead, giving women control of their bodies is a grievous crime. When Offred and Ofglen go to town to shop, geographical clues and street names suggest that they live in what was once Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that their walk takes them near what used to be the campus of Harvard University. The choice of Cambridge for the setting of The Handmaids Tale is significant, since Massachusetts was a Puritan stronghold during the colonial period of the United States.The Puritans were a persecuted minority in England, but when they fled to New England, they re-created the repression they suffered at home, this time casting themselves as the repressors rather than the repressed. They established an intolerant religious society in some ways similar to Gilead. Atwood locates her false intolerant society in a place founded by intolerant people. By turning the old church into a museum, and leaving untouched portraits of Puritan forebears, the founders of Gilead suggest their admiration for the old Puritan society. Chapters 79 Summary Chapter 7I would like to believe this is a story Im telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. (See Important Quotations Explained) At night, Offred likes to remember her former life. She recalls talking to her college friend, Moira, in her dorm room. She remembers being a child and going to a park with her mother, where they saw a group of women and a few men burning pornographic magazines. Offred has forgotten a large chunk of time, which she thinks might be the fault of an injection or pill the authorities gave her. She remembers vigilant up somewhere and screaming, demanding to know what they had done with her daughter. The authorities told Offred she was unfit, and her daughter was with those fit to care for her. They showed her a photograph of her child wearing a white dress, retention the hand of a strange woman. As she recounts these events, Offred imagines she is telling her story to someone, telling things that she cannot write down, because writing is forbidden. Summary Chapter 8 Returning from another shopping trip, Ofglen and Offred notice three new bodies on the Wall.One is a Catholic priest and two are Guardians who bear placards around their necks that read Gender Treachery. This means they were hanged for committing homosexual acts. After looking at the bodies for a while, Offred tells Ofglen that they should continue walking home. They meet a funeral procession of Econowives, the wives of poorer men. One Econowife carries a small black jar. From the size of the jar, Offred can tell that it contains a dead embryo from an early miscarriageone that came too early to know whether it was an Unbaby. The Econowives do not like the Handmaids.One woman scowls, and another spits at the Handmaids as they pass. At the corner near the Commanders home, Ofglen says Under His Eye, the orthodox good-bye, hesitating as if she wants to say more but then keep on her way. When Offred reaches the Commanders driveway she passes Nick, who breaks the rules by asking her about her walk. She says nothing and goes into the house. She sees Serena Joy out in the garden and recalls how after Serenas apprisal career ended, she became a spokesperson for respecting the sanctity of the home and for women staying at home instead of working.Serena herself never stayed at home, because she was always out giving speeches. Once, Offred remembers, someone attempt to assassinate Serena but killed her secretary instead. Offred wonders if Serena is angry that she can no longer be a public figu re, now that what she advocated has come to pass and all women, including her, are confined to the home. In the kitchen, Rita fusses over the quality of the purchases as she always does. Offred retreats upstairs and notices the Commander standing outside her room. He is not supposed to be there. He nods at her and retreats. Summary Chapter 9Offred remembers renting hotel rooms and waiting for Luke to meet her, before they were married, when he was cheating on his first wife. She regrets that she did not fully esteem the freedom to have her own space when she wanted it. Thinking of the problems she and Luke thought they had, she realizes they were truly happy, although they did not know it. She remembers examining her room in the Commanders house little by little after she first arrived. She saw stains on the mattress, left over from long-ago sex, and she discovered a Latin phrase new scratched into the floor of the closet Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.Offred does not understan d Latin. It pleases her to imagine that this message allows her to commune with the woman who wrote it. She pictures this woman as freckly and irreverent, someone like Moira. Later, she asks Rita who stayed in her room before her. Rita tells her to specify which one, implying that there were a number of Handmaids before her. Offred says, guessing, the lively one . . . with freckles. Rita asks how Offred knew about her, but she refuses to tell Offred anything about the previous Handmaid beyond a vague statement that she did not work out. Analysis Chapter 79Atwood suggests that those who seek to restrict sexual expression, whether they are feminists or religious conservatives, ultimately share the same goalthe control of sexuality, particularly womens sexuality. In the flashback to the scene from Offreds childhood in which women burn pornographic magazines, Atwood shows the similarity between the extremism of the left and the extremism of the right. The people burning magazines are f eminists, not religious conservatives like the leaders of Gilead, yet their goal is the same to crack down on certain kinds of sexual freedom.In other words, the desire for control over sexuality is not unique to the religious totalitarians of Gilead it also existed in the feminist anti-pornography crusades that preceded the fall of the United States. Gilead actually appropriates some of the rhetoric of womens liberation in its attempt to control women. Gilead also uses the Aunts and the Aunts rhetoric, forcing women to control other women. Again and again in the novel, the voice of Aunt Lydia ring in Offreds head, insisting that women are better off in Gilead, free from exploitation and violence, than they were in the dangerous freedom of pre-Gilead times.In Chapter 7, Offred relates some of the details of how she lost her child. This loss is the central wound on Offreds psyche throughout the novel, and the novels great source of emotional power. The loss of her child is so painful to Offred that she can only relate the story in fits and starts so far the details of what happened have been murky. When telling stories from her past, like the story of her daughters disappearance, Offred often seems to draw on a partial or foggy memory. It almost seems as if she is remembering details from hundreds of years ago, when we know these things happened a few years before the narrative.Partly this distance is the product of emotional traumathinking of the past is painful for Offred. But in Chapter 7, Offred offers her own explanation for these gaps she thinks it possible that the authorities gave her a pill or injection that harmed her memory. Immediately after remembering her daughter, Offred addresses someone she calls you. She could be talking to God, Luke, or an imaginary future reader. I would like to believe this is a story Im telling, Offred says. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance . . A story is a letter. Dear You, Il l say. In the act of telling her imagined audience about her life, Offred reduces her lifes horror and makes its oppressive weight endurable. Also, if she can think of her life as a story and herself as the writer, she can think of her life as controllable, fictional, something not terrifying because not real. We learn in Chapter 8 that Serena used to campaign against womens rights. This makes her a figure worthy of pity, in a way she supported the anti-woman principles on which Gilead was founded, but once they were mplemented, she found that they affected her as well as other women. She now lives deprived of freedom and saddled with a Handmaid who has sex with her husband. Yet Serena forfeits what pity we might feel for her by her callous, petty behavior toward Offred. Powerless in the world of men, Serena can only take out her frustration on the women under her ovolo by making their lives miserable. In many ways, she treats Offred far worse than the Commander does, which suggest s that Gileads oppressive power structure succeeds not just because men created it, but because women like Serena sustain it.Nolite te bastardes carborundorumthe Latin phrase scrawled in Offreds closet by a previous Handmaidtakes on a magic importance for Offred even before she knows what it means. It symbolizes her inner resistance to Gileads tyranny and makes her feel like she can communicate with other strong women, like the woman who wrote the message. In Chapter 29 we learn what the phrase means, and its role in sustaining Offreds resistance comes to seem perfectly appropriate. Chapters 1012 Summary Chapter 10 Offred often sings songs in her headAmazing Grace or songs by Elvis.Most music is forbidden in Gilead, and there is little of it in the Commanders home. sometimes she hears Serena humming and listening to a recording of herself from the time when she was a famous gospel singer. Summer is approaching, and the house grows hot. Soon the Handmaids will be allowed to wear the ir summertime dresses. Offred thinks about how Aunt Lydia would describe the terrible things that used to happen to women in the old days, before Gilead, when they sunbathed wearing next to nothing. Offred remembers Moira throwing an underwhore party to sell sexy lingerie.She remembers reading stories in the papers about women who were murdered and raped, but even in the old days it seemed distant from her life and unrelated to her. Offred sits at the window, beside a blow embroidered with the word Faith. It is the only word they have given her to read, and she spends many minutes looking at it. From her window, she watches the Commander get into his car and drive away. Summary Chapter 11 Offred says that yesterday she went to the doctor. Every month, a Guardian accompanies Offred to a doctor, who tests her for pregnancy and disease.At the doctors office, Offred undresses, pulling a sheet over her body. A sheet hangs down from the ceiling, cutting off the doctors view of her face. The doctor is not supposed to see her face or speak to her if he can help it. On this visit, though, he chatters cheerfully and then offers to help her. He says many of the Commanders are either too old to produce a child or are sterile, and he suggests that he could have sex with her and impregnate her. His use of the word sterile shocks Offred, for officially sterile men no longer exist. In Gilead, there are only fruitful women and barren women.Offred thinks him genuinely sympathetic to her plight, but she also realizes he enjoys his own empathy and his position of power. After a moment, she declines, saying it is too dangerous. If they are caught, they will both receive the death penalty. She tries to sound casual and grateful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could falsely report that she has a health problem, and then she would be sent to the Colonies with the Unwomen. Offred also feels frightened, she realizes, because she has been g iven a way out. Summary Chapter 12It is one of Offreds required bath days. The bathroom has no mirror, no razors, and no lock on the door. Cora sits outside, waiting for Offred. Offreds own naked body seems strange to her, and she finds it hard to believe that she once wore dishwashing suits, letting people see her thighs and arms, her breasts and buttocks. Lying in the bath, she thinks of her daughter and remembers the time when a crazy woman tried to kidnap the little girl in the supermarket. The authorities in Gilead took Offreds then-five-year-old child from her, and three years have passed since then.Offred has no mementos of her daughter. She remember