The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood (1985)
“Written in 1984 by a woman who said she didn't put in anything that hadn't already happened somewhere. That detail never stops being terrifying.”
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood (1985) · 311pages · Contemporary / Speculative Fiction · 9 AP appearances
Summary
In the near-future theocracy of Gilead — built on the ruins of the United States — a woman known only as Offred serves as a Handmaid, a state-controlled reproductive vessel assigned to a powerful Commander. Stripped of her name, her daughter, her husband, her money, and her freedom, Offred narrates her daily life in fragments: the walking, the shopping, the monthly Ceremony in which she is raped according to scripture. She finds small acts of resistance — an affair with the Commander's driver Nick, secret meetings with the underground network Mayday, coded conversations with her fellow Handmaid Ofglen. Whether she escapes, survives, or is destroyed is left deliberately uncertain. What remains is her voice.
Why It Matters
Published in 1985 to strong critical acclaim, The Handmaid's Tale became a cultural touchstone that has grown more urgent rather than less with each passing decade. After the 2016 American election, sales surged 200% almost overnight. The red cloaks and white bonnets of Handmaids became protest c...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Intimate and colloquial in the present tense; lyrical and elegiac in memory; flat and clinical in the Ceremony sequences; parodically academic in the Historical Notes
Narrator: Offred: present-tense, fragmented, unreliable by her own admission. She tells us she is reconstructing, rearranging, ...
Figurative Language: High but restrained
Historical Context
Published 1985; set in a near-future America; written in the context of Reagan's America and Cold War Europe: Every element of Gilead is sourced from real history. The white bonnets that shield Handmaids from view come from 19th-century American women's head coverings. The Salvagings echo public executions...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Atwood said she 'didn't put in anything that hadn't already happened somewhere.' Choose three elements of Gilead and identify their real-world historical sources. Does knowing the sources make the novel more or less frightening?
- We never learn Offred's real name. What does Atwood achieve by withholding it? Is 'Offred' a name or a description? Does the name tell us something the real name would suppress?
- Aunt Lydia says: 'There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.' Analyze this argument. Is it coherent? Why is it effective?
- The Historical Notes epilogue shows that Gilead eventually fell. Does this ending provide comfort, or does the academic framing undercut the comfort? What is Professor Pieixoto's role in the novel's argument?
- Offred says 'I compose myself' multiple times. The word 'compose' means both 'to make calm' and 'to write.' Trace this double meaning through the novel. What is Offred composing?
Notable Quotes
“I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stor...”
“Blessed be the fruit. May the Lord open.”
“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being ...”
Why Read This
Because Atwood built Gilead out of things that have already happened — and she shows her work. Reading this novel is reading a map of how freedom disappears incrementally, with the cooperation of the people losing it. Offred's voice is also one of...