An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The handmaids Tale Marg atomic string along 18t A bothod Con school text Margargont Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her first book of poetry in 1961 stop consonant att closeing the University of Toronto. She later received degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a occupational conclave in teaching at the university level. Her first novel, The Edible Wo part, was published in 1969 to wide acclaim. Atwood continued teaching as her literary attenti angiotensin converting enzymer blos roundd. She has lectu trigger-happy wide and has served as a writer-inresidence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.Atwood wrote The retainers Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a topper-seller. The servants Tale f boths forthright within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or dystopian novels, exemplified by stratumics comparable Aldous Huxleys Brave New World and George Orwells 1984. Novels in this genre represent imagined universes and societies that atomic number 18 non ideals, on the merelyton now instead be terrifying or restrictive. Atwoods novel offers a strongly wo workforces liberationist vision of dystopia.She wrote it curtly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Marg art Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized move workforcet of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the knowledgeable novelty of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this religious right heightened feminist fears that the gains women had fare up in previous decades would be reversed. In The Handmaids Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of womens rights.In the novels nightmare origination of Gilead, a group of conservative rel igious extremists has taken power and turned the versed revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation from traditional sex roles, besides Gilead is a community founded on a return to traditional values and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men. What feminists conside bolshie the great triumphs of the 1970snamely, widespread gate focusing to contraception, the well-groundedization of spontaneous abortion, and the increasing political influence of fe priapic voters obligate tout ensemble been und wizard. Women in Gilead are non provided command to vote, they are command to read or write.Atwoods novel in addition paints a impression of a military personnel und unrivalled by pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears active declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear power, and -environmental degradation. Some of the novels c at nonpareil clockrns chew the fatm dated today, and its unsaid condemnation of the political finales of Amer icas religious conservatives has been criticized as partial and e trulywherely paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaids Tale remains one of the well-nigh powerful late portrayals of a totalistic company, and one of the some dystopian novels to examine in expand the intersection of politics and versedity.The novels exploration of the contr everywheresial politics of reproductive memory seems correspondingly to guarantee Atwoods novel a readership well into the twenty-first century. Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their lady friend, Jess. Her ab turn up recent novel, The Blind Assassin, won Great Britains Booker Prize for writings in 2000. Plot Overview Offred is a Handmaid in the res in the public eye(predicate)a of Gilead, a undemocratic and theocratic realm that has re modeld the United States of America. Because of sedately low reproduction rates, Handmaids are appoint to go kidskinren for elite couples that constitute trouble conceiving.O ffred serves the commandant and his wife, Serena pleasance, a spring gospel singer and advocate for traditional values. Offred is non the narrators real number nameHandmaid name calling be of the word of followed by the name of the Handmaids commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she m aged(prenominal)iness beget electroneutral, dumb sex with the air force policeman duration Serena sits behind her, directing her hands. Offreds license, like the immunity of all women, is completely restricted.She puke leave the house scarcely on give away trips, the door to her means provoke non be completely shut, and the look, Gileads clandestine police force, watch her every public move. As Offred dictates the horizontal surface of her daily life, she frequently slips into flashbacks, from which the reader arsehole reconstruct the neverthelessts leading up to the beginning of the novel. In the obsolete world, originally Gilea d, Offred had an affair with Luke, a espouse man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child unitedly. Offreds m otherwisewise was a single render and feminist activist. Offreds best friend, Moira, was fiercely independent.The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily in stock(predicate) pornography, prostitution, and violence against womenwhen pollution and chemical spills led to declining fertility rates. victimisation the military, they kill the president and members of Congress and launched a coup, claiming that they were pickings power temporarily. They cracked big money on womens rights, forbidding women to hold property or jobs. Offred and Luke in like mannerk their girlfriend and attempted to flee across the b coif into Canada, that they were caught and separated from one a nonher, 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 exit Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were indoctrinated into Gileads ideology in eagerness for be glide slope Handmaids. aunty Lydia supervised the women, giving oral communicationes extolling Gileads beliefs that women should be slavish to men and alone concerned with bearing children. aunty Lydia to a fault argued that much(prenominal) a social order ultimately offers women to a greater extent respect and sentry go than the old, pre-Gilead hostel offered them.Moira is brought to the rosy Center, exclusively she explodes, and Offred does non know what conk let ons of her. Once assigned to the air force officers house, Offreds life settles into a restrictive routine. She takes obtain trips with Ofglen, a nonher Handmaid, and they visit the ring extraneous what employ 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 commandant reads to the family line from the upstarts, and then goes to the bed direction, where his married fair sex and Offred wait for him, and has sex with Offred.The first break from her routine occurs when she visits the doctor and he offers to have sex with her to make her pregnant, pointing that her air force officer is probably infertile. She refuses. The doctor makes her uneasy, entirely his proposition is as well riskyshe could be sent away if caught. after a Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, knap, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him regularly. They play Scrabble (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 privy(p) coming upons, he asks her to kiss him. During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen recrudesces t o Offred that she is a member of Mayday, an hole-and-corner(a) organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony olfactions different and less im private now that she knows the Commander. Their night cartridge holder conversations begin to touch on the new order that the Commander and his fellow leaders have created in Gilead. When Offred admits how unhappy she is, the Commander remarks, You fecest make an omelette without breaking eggs. afterward some sentence has gone by without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred have sex with come off in secret and pass the child off as the Commanders. Serena promises to cash in ones chips Offred a date of her daughter if she sleeps with knap, and Offred realizes that Serena has eer kn have got the where slightlys of Offreds daughter. The equivalent night that Offred is to sleep with snick, the Commander secretly takes her out to a ennead called Jezebels, where the Commanders mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira forgeing in that respect. The two women meet in a bathroom, and Offred elates that Moira was captured just before she crossed the border.She chose life in Jezebels over be sent to the Colonies, where close to political prisoners and dangerous pot are sent. After that night at Jezebels, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The Commander takes Offred upstairs after a few hours, and they have sex in what apply to be a hotel room. She tries to feign passion. Soon after Offred returns from Jezebels, late at night, Serena arrives and give tongue tos Offred to go to Nicks room. Offred and Nick have sex. Soon they begin to sleep to corroborateher frequently, without anyones knowledge.Offred survives caught up in the affair and ignores Ofglens requests that she gather discipline from the Commander for Mayday. iodine day, all the Handmaids take part in a group execution of a supposed rapist, supervised by aunty Lydia. Ofgl en strikes the first blow. Later, she tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to impute him out of his misery. Shortly thereafter, Offred goes out shopping, and a new Ofglen meets her. This new woman is not part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she aphorism the secret police coming for her.At home, Serena has found 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 really 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, indite in the form of a lecture given by prof Pieixoto. He explains the formation and customs of Gilead in objective, analytical languag e.He discusses the signifi behindce of Offreds story, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick set up Offreds escape but that her emergency after that is unknown. She could have get away to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured. Character List Offred The narrator and wizard of The Handmaids Tale. Offred be abundants to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite, free couples. Handmaids portray which Commander owns them by adopting their Commanders label, much(prenominal) as Fred, and preceding them with Of. Offred remembers 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 animal(prenominal) and psychological burdens of her daily life in Gilead pain her and pervade her record. depict an in-depth analysis of Offred. The Commander The Commander is the head of the househ old where Offred whole shebang as a Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox relationship 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 partnership he opposes. However, we necessitate from motley clues and from the epilogue that the Commander was rattling involved in innovation 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 social reformer for traditional values. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, heretofore she is desperately unhappy. Serenas unhappiness shows that her restrictive, male-dominated society hind endnot bring happiness eve to its most pampered and powerful women. Serena jealously guards her claims t o 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 reextractionfulness 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 manages to get away from the reddened Center. However, she is caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred occurs Moira working as a prostitute in a club for the Commanders. At the club, Moira seems resigned to her fate, which suggests that a totalistic society can grind down and crush nevertheless the most resourceful and independent people. Read an in-depth analysis of Moira. aunt Lydia The auntys 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 chromatic Center, the re? education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids. Although she appears only in Offreds flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her instructions haunt Offred in her daily life. Aunt Lydias slogans and maxims ticktack 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, ascertain Gileads words utter in their heads. Nick Nick is a Guardian, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commanders home, where he works as a gardener and chauffeur.He and Offred have a knowledgeable chemistry that they get to take when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter betwixt 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 subway, or both. At the end of t he 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 other(prenominal) Handmaid who is Offreds shopping partner and a member of the insurgent Mayday underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself mannikina 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 exalted status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. Cora seems more than topic with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita.She hopes that Offred leave behind be able to conceive, because then she allow 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 enviousness of all the other Handmaids i n the area, but the baby later turns out to be de organisean Unbabyand there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, incessantly ready to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all authority 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 comes 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 manakin of love they shared is prohibited in Gilead, and Offreds memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, emotionless soil of male-female relations in the new society.Offreds receive Offred remembers her mother in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead worldshe was a single parent and a feminist activist. One d ay during her education at the Red Center, Offred sees a telly of her mother as a unripened woman, yelling and carrying a banner in an anti-rape march called Take Back the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead fate to stamp out. Aunt Elizabeth Aunt Elizabeth is one of the Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunts unvarying during her escape from the Red Center. Rita A Martha, or domestic servant, in the Commanders household.She seems less content with her lot than Cora, the other Martha working there. prof 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 elaborate the historical significance of the story that we have just read. Analysis of major(ip) Characters Offred Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are told the consummate 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 finished with(predicate) asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses adequacy faults to make her human, but not so many a(prenominal) that she becomes an disagreeable figure. She likewise possesses a dark consciousness of humora burial site wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak aversions of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an indifferent bicycle woman placed in an extraordinary bunk. Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly.She is unexpressedly a feminist flair she had always felt uncomfortable with her mothers 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 only when 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 given(p) 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 Offreds Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also bears tariff 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 want for companionship make him seem a s much a prisoner of Gileads 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 doesnt 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 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 engage 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 invent a humanity, Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can seem human, and even likable, given the right set of mass. 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 center that he, like the national socialist guard, is a monster. Serena JoyThough Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the establishment of the Gileadean kingdom, 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 might not enjoy getting their way as much as they believe they would. Serenas obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the e dge 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 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 raise the baby. Furthermore, Serenas offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always known of Offreds daughters whereabouts. Not only 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 imp lies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead. Moira Throughout the novel, Moiras relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship. Gilead claims to publicize solidarity amongst 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 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 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 th at most of the Handmaids adopt.When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebels, function the Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate. After em luggage compartmenting resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to correspond the way a totalitarian subject 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 Gilead 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 around a single goal look into of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete reign over 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. patronage 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 films, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her remains 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 somebodyity in order to make them docile carriers of the nigh generation. Language as a Tool of Power Gilead creates an official language that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new societys 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 g ender 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 actor 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. especially 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 amid a states repression of its subjects and its perversion of language (Newspeak in George Orwells 1984 is the most illustrious 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 expression 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 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 brave Gileads existence by willingly participating in it, destiny 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 detailed 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, take note a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the homogeneous function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwoods cognitive content is bleak. At the resembling time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered cleverness and s go one-time(prenominal) 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 pass struc tures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to make grow and inform the texts major themes. Rape and Sexual Violence Sexual violence, especially 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 break in treasureed in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept well(p) from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible in one scene, the Handmaids separate 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 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 wi th their Commanders. Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracya government in which there is no separation between state and religionand its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. home(prenominal) 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. completely the stores have biblical names Loaves and Fishes, All variant, 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 pharisaic 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 theology is a National Resour ce predominates. Similarities between far-right and Feminist IdeologiesAlthough The Handmaids Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally take to the woodss 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 also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and sisterhood to its own advantage. These points of similarity express the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwoods gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Cambridge, milliampere 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 milliampere as a whole were centers for Americas first religious and intolerant societythe puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this recital with the antique 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 UniversityGilead has transform Harvards buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gileads secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Y ard, 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 invest 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 Hawthornes 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 symboli ze 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 patently 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 tincture the new world.The Eyes The Eyes of God are Gileads secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal circumspection 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 heavyset Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on array cots in a gymnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizab eth patrol with electric oxen 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, quietly exchanging names with the other women. compendium Chapter 2The scene changes, and the story shifts from the past 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 shatte rproof. There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door does not curlicue 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, take over green uniforms. Wives take 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 soulfulness 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 gossip like they dogossip about how one H andmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a tumbleting needle out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander with hatful cleaner. Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She collects from Rita the tokens that serve as currency. Each token bears an fig 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 introductory posting secluded herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new Commander s 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, feeling away. Suddenly, Offred recognized her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead soprano from Growing Souls gospel truth Hour, a Sunday-morning religious program that aired when Offred was a child. Analysis Chapters 15The Handmaids Tale plunges immediately 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 instruct first chapter. The women in the gymnasium live under the constant charge 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 written on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history high school girls outlet 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 place on a previous so ciety, 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 atmosphere 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 notwithstanding what purpose Offred serves in the house, although it seems to be sexualCora comments that she could have make 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 Handm aids, 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 topographic point 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 twinge face.Offred tells the story in nonlinear fashion, following the temporal leaps of her own mind. The narrative goes where her suppositions take itone moment to the present, in the Commanders house, and the future(a) 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 sto ry 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 notices 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 spy 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, thrifty 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 sphere a checkpoint manned by two young Guardians. The Guard ians serve as a routine police force and do menial labor. They are men too young, too old, or just generally high-risk for the army. Young Guardians, such as these, can be dangerous because they are frequently more fanatical or nervous 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 ti me 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 fantasticrs and ignore catcalls on the street. presently 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 or fruit mark the stores, rather than letter 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 fuddle 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 everyday 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 guilty 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 take 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. Summa ry Chapter 6 This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. (See authoritative 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 nearby 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 government hang the bodies of executed criminals 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 abortion s 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 recounting 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 official 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, Chari ot). 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 salve in Gilead. This idiomatic expression, 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 over-the-hill 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 Jud aism. Atwood seems less raise 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 force to inspire sexual attraction is the only power she retains. Every other privilege is stripped away, down to the very act of adaptation, which is forbidden. Women are not even allowed to read store signs. By controlling womens minds, by not allowing 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 hammer 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 horrifying 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 fictional intolerant society in a place founded by intolerant people. By bit 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 wear out 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 waking 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, holding 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 at the bodies for a while, Offred tells Ofglen that they should continue walking home. They meet a funeral emanation 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 continuing on her way. When Offred reaches the Commanders motorway 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 singing career ended, she became a spokesperson for respecting the holiness 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 tested to assassinate Serena but killed her escritoire instead. Offred wonders if Serena is angry that she can no longer be a public figure, 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 rest outside her room. He is not supposed t o 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 apprize 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 freshly scratched into the floor of the closet Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.Offred does not empathise 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 disputation 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 childishness 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 feminists, 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 unequalled 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 vox of Aunt Lydia rings in Offreds head, insisting that women are relegate 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 almos t seems as if she is computer storage 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, Ill 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, f ictional, something not terrifying because not real. We learn in Chapter 8 that Serena used to oppose 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 attach 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 switch by making their lives miserable. In many ways, she treats Offred far worse than the Commander does, which suggests 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 magical importance for O ffred 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 head fearsome 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 comprehend 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 their summer 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 sel l 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 cushion 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 unfertilized, and he sugg ests 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 legal casual and grateful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could wrong 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 given a way out. Summary Chapter 12It is one of Offreds call for 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 bathing suits, letting people see her thighs and arms, her breasts and buttocks. deceit 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