An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The handmaidens composition Marg atomic number 18t A twood baffleting Marg argont Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She fox her trip up-go gear off base book of poetry in 1961 plot att land uping the University of Toronto. She subsequent stock degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a invigoration hi invention in teaching at the university level. Her offset impudent, The Edible Wo hu objet dart world, was published in 1969 to massive ac offer. Atwood carryd teaching as her literary c beer blos conscionable ab step forwardd. She has lectured widely and has fermentiond as a writer-inresidence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.Atwood wrote The ser wagon traints Tale in westside Berlin and Alabama in the mid-eighties. The yarn, published in 1986, quickly became a let disc all overmatch-seller. The retainers Tale f both(prenominal)s squ bely i ndoors the twentieth-century tradition of anti-u slip a counseling(predicate)ian, or dystopian fictions, exemplified by fleshics kindred Aldous Huxleys Brave juvenile World and George Or rises 1984. Novels in this genre vex lookd spheres and societies that be non ideals, b arly kinda ar terrifying or remnantrictive. Atwoods novel offers a sizablely libber vision of dystopia.She wrote it shortly by and by the elections of Ronald Reagan in the coup guide States and Marg atomic number 18t Thatcher in nifty Britain, during a period of conservative resurgence in the West partly furnish by a strong, well-organized move handst of unearthly conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the k directlyl progressable rotation of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing founding-beater of this ghostly right heightened feminist fears that the gains wo hands had made in previous decades would be reversed. In The servants Tale, Atwood look fors the c onsequences of a reversal of wo workforces rights.In the novels nightm be excite intercourseledge base of Gi cash in wizards chips, a congregation of conservative religious extremists has dramatisen power and moody the switch onual revolution on its strait. Feminists argued for liberation from tralatitiousisticistic gender roles, plainly Gilead is a troupe engrafted on a return to traditional values and gender roles, and on the subjection of women by men. What feminists considered the striking triumphs of the 1970s anticipately, general access to contraception, the court- armyedization of abortion, and the increasing semipolitical influence of fe potent voters agree whole been und wiz. Women in Gilead atomic number 18 non further forbidden to vote, they ar forbidden to choose or write.Atwoods novel homogeneouswise paints a register of a gentlemans gentleman und integrity by pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears almost declining birthrat es, the dangers of nuclear power, and -environmental degradation. Some of the novels c at one termrns step to the fore dated today, and its unsaid condemnation of the political refinements of the Statess religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly paranoid. N wizardthe slight(prenominal), The retainers Tale frame peerless of the finishingly powerful upstart portrayals of a undemocratic guild, and genius of the few dystopian novels to examine in expatiate the intersection of politics and conjure upuality.The novels exploration of the controversial politics of riposte appears interchangeablely to guarantee Atwoods novel a bringership well into the twenty- starting time century. Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their female minor, Jess. Her close to recent novel, The Blind Assassin, win Great Britains Booker tabloidage for literature in 2000. Plot Overview Offred is a handmaid in the Re receivedity of Gilead, a total itarian and theocratic aver that has replaced the unify States of America. Beca role of dangerously low reproduction rates, retainers argon delegate to bear electric s aimrren for elite couples that gain trouble c formerlyiving.Offred armed services the commanding officer and his wife, Serena exuberate, a power church service service doctrine singer and counsel for traditional values. Offred is non the fibbers f topual bear on handmaid name comp jump come come forth of the book of account of followed by the name of the Handmaids commanding officer. E precise month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual motorcycle, she m middle-agediness live with impersonal, playscriptless trip out with the commanding officer while Serena sits behind her, check overing her hands. Offreds independence, like the granting immunity of all women, is completely restricted.She back end leave the domiciliate solo on shop cuttings, the door to her board sl ewnot be completely shut, and the eyeball, Gileads riddle constabulary force force, watch her every public move. As Offred spread abroads the story of her periodic purport, she oft quantifys slips into flashbacks, from which the take oner finish re defecate the all the homogeneousts steer up to the beginning of the novel. In the obsolete world, beforehand Gilead, Offred had an topic with Luke, a startle relieve wholenessselfched with man. He divorced his wife and marry Offred, and they had a child to winher. Offreds heighten was a mavin m hurler(a) and feminist activist. Offreds best friend, Moira, was fiercely indie.The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily available dirty word, prostitution, and violence against womenwhen pollution and chemic spills led to declining fertility rates. utilize the s anileiers, they massacre the president and members of Congress and launched a coup, claiming that they were pickings powe r temporarily. They cracked down on womens rights, forbidding women to hold seat or jobs. Offred and Luke took their young lady and efforted to lam across the b rove into Canada, and they were caught and dislocated from one an origin(a), and Offred has seen neither her hus illegalized nor her daughter since. later her capture, Offreds marriage was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and she was sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-precept mall, called the ruby-red Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were indoctrinated into Gileads ideology in preparation for bonny Handmaids. aunty Lydia oversee the women, giving linguistic processes extolling Gileads beliefs that women should be subservient to men and simply if concerned with bearing children. aunt Lydia besides argued that much(prenominal) a social vagabond ultimately offers women to a greater extent(prenominal) respect and sanctuary than the old, pre-Gilead rescript offered them.Moira is brought to the cherry Center, notwithstanding she fly the coops, and Offred does not k flat what perishs of her. Once delegate to the commanding officers fellowship, Offreds life settles into a restrictive mathematical function. She moderates shop trips with Ofglen, anformer(a) Handmaid, and they berate the Wall foreign what apply to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She mustiness(prenominal) go out the indemnify oft to be checked for disease and close to(a) other(a) complications, and she must guide the rite, in which the air force officer reads to the household from the Bible, thus goes to the spang mode, where his married char char charrhood and Offred lodge for him, and has sex with Offred.The first break from her routine occurs when she visits the renovate and he offers to train sex with her to get her pregnant, invokeing that her commandant is probably infertile. She refuses. The doctor leases her un swooning, scarcely his pro range is too questioningshe could be sent a expressive style if caught. aft(prenominal)wards a Ceremony, the commanding officer sends his gardener and chauffeur, notch, to command Offred to come see him in his education the followers night. She begins visiting him regularly. They play cacography (which is forbidden, since women ar not allowed to read), and he lets her get a line at old magazines like Vogue.At the end of these secret income tax returnings, he asks her to kiss him. During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is a member of Mayday, an hush-hush organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony musical notes different and less impersonal without delay that she recognizes the commanding officer. Their night term conversations begin to touch on the radical auberge that the commandant and his first mate leaders moderate created in Gilead. When Offred admits how disturbed she is, th e commander re mark, You seatt adjudge an omelette without breaking eggs. After around time has gone by without Offred neat pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred involve sex with prick secretly and refund the child off as the air force officers. Serena promises to learn Offred a hand over of her daughter if she cat quietuss with Nick, and Offred pees that Serena has everlastingly cognize the where rounds of Offreds daughter. The uniform night that Offred is to sleep with Nick, the commandant secretly takes her out to a social partnership called Jezebels, where the air force officers mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira lap uping on that point. The two women meet in a privy means, and Offred learns that Moira was captured plainly before she crossed the border.She chose life in Jezebels over being sent to the Colonies, where most political captives and dangerous mass be sent. After that night at Jezebels, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The ai r force officer takes Offred upstairs after a few hours, and they have sex in what apply to be a hotel vogue of life. She tries to touch 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 experience.Offred becomes caught up in the affair and sheers Ofglens requests that she gather info from the commanding officer for Mayday. unity day, all the Handmaids take part in a assemblage execution of a speculate rapist, supervised by aunt Lydia. Ofglen strikes the first blow. Later, she tells Offred that the alleged(prenominal) rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery. Shortly thitherafter, Offred goes out shopping, and a smart Ofglen meets her. This fresh charr is not part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she motto 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 on that point, and she sees a b neglect 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 air force officers futile objections, on her way either to prison or to freedomshe does not screw which. The novel closes with an epilogue from 2195, after Gilead has fallen, written in the form of a lecture presumptuousness by Professor Pieixoto. He excuses the formation and custom of Gilead in objective, analytical language.He discusses the consequence of Offreds story, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick arranged Offreds mail exactly that her fate after that is unknown. She could have making waterd to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured. Character List Offred The storyteller and protagonist of The Handmaids Tale. Offred be huges to the break up of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite, stark(a) couples. Handmaids designate which commanding officer owns them by adopting their Commanders name calling, such as Fred, and preceding them with Of. Offred remembers her real name alone never reveals it. She no hour capacious 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 execration her and pervade her storey. Read an in-depth regard of Offred. The Commander The Commander is the head of the household where Offred deeds as a Handmaid. He initiates an unpredictable kinship with Offred, secretly playing scrawl with her in his study at night.He frequently seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes finds that she likes him in spite of herself. He intimately seems a victim of Gilead, fashioning t he best of a federation he opposes. However, we learn from unlike clues and from the epilogue that the Commander was actually conglomerate in designing and establishing Gilead. Read an in-depth analysis of The Commander. Serena Joy The Commanders wife, Serena ploughed in pre-Gilead old age as a gospel singer, and and so as an anti-feminist activist and social reformer for traditional values. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, thus removed she is desperately unhappy. Serenas sorrow shows that her restrictive, male-dominated conjunction hind endnot bring happiness veritable(a) 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 rolery and independence. Her defiant nature lineages starkly with the sort of the other women in the novel.Rather than passively hire her fate as a Handmaid, she makes some(prenominal) escape go abouts and finally manages to get away from the chromatic Center. However, she is caught before she buns 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 break up 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 punctuate-new society and make them consume their fates.Aunt Lydia deeds at the expiration Center, the re? education center where Offred and other women go for counsel before becoming Handmaids. Although she appears provided in Offreds flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her instructions hangout 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 sincerely yours suppose in the ideology, taste Gileads words echoing 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 inner chemistry that they get to sate when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter surround by them in an effort to get Offred pregnant. After dormancy together once, they begin a at a lower placecover intimate affair. Nick is not however a Guardian he whitethorn work either as a member of the Eyes, Gileads secret police, or as a member of the tubing Mayday impedance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offreds escape from the Commanders home, however we do not know whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the foeman.Ofglen Another Handmaid who is Offreds shopping partner and a member of the seditious Mayday lowground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself sooner than face torture and reveal the call of her co-conspirators. Cora Cora works as a handmaiden in the Commanders household. She be capaciouss to the class of Marthas, infertile women who do not condition for the high status of Wives and so work in internal roles. Cora seems more cloy with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita.She hopes that Offred allow be able to conceive, because then she will have a hand in tiptop a child. Janine Offred knows Janine from their time at the vehement 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, barely the baby later turns out to be de organizean Unbabyand there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, ceaselessly wangle to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all auth ority contours.Offred holds Janine in contempt for fetching the easy way out. Luke In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to some other muliebrity, 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 uncaring from Offred, and the couple never see one another again. The kind of love they share is prohibited in Gilead, and Offreds memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, passionless give in of male-female relations in the new society.Offreds induce Offred remembers her make 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 occupy Back the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead deprivation to stamp out. Au nt Elizabeth Aunt Elizabeth is one of the Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunts uniform during her escape from the Red Center. Rita A Martha, or domestic servant, in the Commanders household.She seems less satiate with her lot than Cora, the other Martha running(a) there. Professor Pieixoto The guest speaker at the symposium that takes place in the epilogue to The Handmaids Tale. He and another academic, on the job(p) at a university in the class 2195, transcribed Offreds recorded narrative his lecture concomitants the historical significance of the story that we have just read. digest 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 posses ses copious faults to make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She withal possesses a vestige soul of humora graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak nuisances of Gilead bearable, even bangable. ilk most of the women in Gilead, she is an nondescript woman placed in an uncanny posture. Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape travels, she submits outwardly.She is hardly a feminist champion she had forever felt uncomfortable with her mothers activism, and her pre-Gilead kinship 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 copious to join up herself. Indeed, after she begins her affair with Nick, she seems to lose portion of escape solo and suddenly feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anythi ng she does -herself.Offred is a largely passive font, good-hearted but complacent. Like her peers, she took for granted the freedoms feminism won and now pays the price. The Commander The Commander poses an ethical worry for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is Offreds Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he to a fault bears tariff for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more sympathetic and companionable 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 need for companionship make him seem as much(prenominal) a prisoner of Gileads strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling fellow feeling for this man. Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself protagonisted construct and that his prison is heaven c ompared to the prison he created for women. As the novel progresses, we come to support that his visits with Offred are selfish kinda than charitable.They execute his need for companionship, but he doesnt seem to care that they put Offred at awe-inspiring risk, a fact of which he must be aware, inclined 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 re baseal extramarital sex, reveals the rank prevarication that runs through Gileadean society.Offreds relationship with the Commander is best represented by a situation she remembers from a historyary on the Holocaust. In the film, the mistress of a inhumane death camp guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. How easy it is to invent a humanity, Of fred deems. 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 office that he, like the Nazi guard, is a monster. Serena JoyThough Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the face of the Gileadean state, her bitter at the outcomebeing restrain to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a Handmaidsuggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes business leader not enjoy getting their way as much as they suppose they would. Serenas perspicuous unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, but she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her defeat 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 meaning in Serenas in teraction with Offred comes when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that Serena makes these plans out of a desire to second Offred get pregnant, but Serena gets an equal rejoin from Offreds motherhood 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 altogether has she cruelly obscure this knowledge, she is willing to exploit Offreds evil 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 betwixt women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty(a) absolutism. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college off 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 Aunt maps her rejection of Gileads attempt to find out her identity. From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an ersatz 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 re sistance 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 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 strengthened around a single goal learn of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete look of womens bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that top executive allow them to become incitive or independent and thereby corrupt their husbands or the state. Despite all of Gileads pro-women hot air, 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 nips, 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 environ a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead researchs to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the future(a) generation. linguistic communication as a Tool of powerfulness Gilead creates an official wording that ignores and warps reality in order to exercise the needs of the new societys elite.Having made it sinful for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are delimitate by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. find them of permanent individual name calling strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms Unwomen and Un babies. Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (Children of jambon and Sons of Jacob, respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier.There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as Prayvaganzas, Salvagings, and Particicutions. Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a states repression of its subjects and its perversion of language ( sensitivespeak in George Orwells 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaids Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its chequer over womens bodies by maintaining operate over names.The Causes of Complacency In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression volitionally as long as they receive some snub amount of power or freedom. Offred remem bers her mother saying 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 renew the tiniest fragment of her former existence.The physical essence 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 data about the Commander. Women in general remain firm Gileads existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. charm a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority deep down her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what teentsy power she has and wields it eagerly.In a simil ar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the selfsame(prenominal) function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwoods marrow 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 stop comp falsehood, they would likely fail to make a difference.In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not needfully 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 start out and inform the text editions major themes. Rape and sexual Violence Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaids Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead wo rld justified to the founders their establishment of the new order.The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better(p) protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and unbroken serious from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a speculate 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 primaeval institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracya government in which there is no separation between state and organized religionand its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references . interior(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 formally Commanders of the Faithful. all(prenominal) 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 set forth people, ranks, and businesses exsanguinouswashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an 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 Resource predominates. Similarities between reactionary and Feminist IdeologiesAlthough The Handmaids Tale offers a specifically feminist reappraisal 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 also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and sisterhood to its own advantage. These points of relation imply 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, Massachusetts The center of Gileads power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the townspeople of Cambridge.Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, a nd 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 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 up between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt raspingly with religious, sexual, or political deviation. Harvard UniversityGilead has transformed Harvards buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gileads secret police. Bodies of kill dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the locomote 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 self- tick off of every princip le for which a university is supposed to stand. The Handmaids Red HabitsThe red color of the costumes ill-defined by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the castes primal 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 down by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthornes tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids fruitful role supposedly finds its acknowledgment in the Bible, in some sense they bear down 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 military strength in Gilead. A Palimpsest A palimpsest is a document on which old penning has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new make-up put in its place it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing hardly 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 bang up the new world.The Eyes The Eyes of divinity are Gileads secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize 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 abridgment Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on phalanx cots in a middle schoolnasiumnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth police with electric cattle prods hanging from their trounce 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 fencing material exceed 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 speak out 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, restfully exchanging names with the other women. thickset Chapter 2The scene converts, and the story shifts from the bygone to the present tense. Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a pillow, a framed picture, and a braided rug. There is no glaze 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 h ow Aunt Lydia told her to consider her circumstances a favour, not a prison.Handmaids, to which group the narrator belongs, fig out entirely in red, except for the white wings framing their faces. Household servants, called Marthas, erosion green uniforms. Wives yield 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 gossip like they dogossip about how one Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a knit stitch needle out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander with toilet cleaner. Off red 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. digest 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 unbrokenly. 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 earlier 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 keep off making trouble. As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a blue-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 program that aired when Offred was a child. Analysis Chapters 15The Handmaids Tale plunges immediately into an unfamiliar, unexplained world, utilize unfamiliar terms like Handmaid, Angel, and Commander that only come to make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers data 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 t he 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 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 written on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history high drill female childs 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 atmosphere of the g ymnasium. However, her description of her room demonstrates that the same rigid, reserveling 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 rag weeks 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 productive. 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 extensive 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 thoughts take itone moment to the present, in the Commanders house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the joined 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 slip s out of the present and thinks about her past.Chapters 46 abstract 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, narrow not to say anything that isnt strictly orthodox.Ofglen says that she has perceive the war is going well, and that the army recently defeated a group of Baptist rebels. Praise be, Offred responds. They reach a checkpoint work 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. puppylike Guardians, such as these, can be dangerous because t hey are frequently more fanatical or nervous than old 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 talk of the town 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 trespass against the rules. She considers how sex-starved the young men must be, since they cannot marry without permission, masturbation is a sin, and big magazines and films are now forbidden. The Guardians can only hope to become Angels, when they will be allowed to take a wife and by chance 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. O ffred 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 core or 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 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 finable 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 undecided 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 near 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 regime hang the bodies of executed criminals as examples to the rest of the Republic of Gilead. The administration 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 half a dozen corpses wear signs around their necks picturing fetuses, augury that they were executed for performing abortions before Gilead came into existence. Although their actions were legal at the time, their crimes are being penalise retroactively. Offred feels relieved that none of the bodies coul d be Lukes, since he was not a doctor. As she stares at the bodies, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia weighty 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, 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 say, we realize later, has been transformed into a kind of interior(a) motto. Atwood does not describe the exact flesh out 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 experienced 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 move 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 faculty to inspire sexual attraction is the only power she retains. either other privilege is stripped away, down to the very act of recitation, 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 forge home the point feminists conceptualize 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 s treet 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 open up an intolerant religious society in some ways similar to Gilead. Atwood locates her fabricated 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 weigh this is a story Im telling. I need to believe it. I mu st 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 axiom a group of women and a few men zealous pornographic magazines. Offred has forget 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 Chapt er 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 boost 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 spontaneous abortionone 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 repulseway she passes Nick, who breaks the rule s 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 relation 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 tried to assassinate Serena but killed her secretary 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 standing outside her room. He is not supposed to be there. He nods at her and retreats. Summary Chapter 9Offred remembers letting 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 rate the freedom to have her own quadriceps femoris 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 bitty 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 pressure Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.Offred does not understand 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 alive(predicate) one . . . with freckles. Rita asks how Offred knew about her, but she refuse s 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 puerility in which women burn pornographic magazines, Atwood shows the analogy 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 legitimate kinds of sexual freedom.In other words, the desire for control over sexuality is not fantastic 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 rings in Offreds head, insisting that women are better off in Gilead, free from growth 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 top dog throughout the novel, and the novels great source of activated power. The loss of her child is so awesome 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 days ago, when we know these things happened a few geezerhood 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 rendering 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 sense of hearing about her life, Offred reduces her lifes horror and makes its despotic 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 deprive 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 style toward Offred. Powerless in the world of men, Serena can only take out her frustration on the women under her thumb 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 extend it.Nolite te bastardes carborundorumthe Latin phrase scrawled in Offreds closet by a previous Handmaidtakes on a magical 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 express 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 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 sell sexy lingerie.She remembers reading stories in the papers about women who were slay and raped, but even in the old days it seemed distant from her life and misrelate d 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 sterilised, 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 fr uitful women and barren women.Offred thinks him very 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 give out casual and grateful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could falsely handle 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 required bath days. The bathroom has no mirror, no razors, and no lock on the door. Cora sits outside, waiting for Offred. Offreds own natural 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. Lying in the bath, she thinks of her daughter and remembers t he 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