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.”
The Handmaid's Tale— Summary & Analysis
by Margaret Atwood · published 1985 · 311 pages · Contemporary / Speculative Fiction
A user-friendly study guide for The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985): a high-level plot summary, full chapter-by-chapter analysis, theme breakdowns, character profiles, and 30 essay questions designed for high-school, ap-english, college readers. Unlike a stock summary, sumsumsum.com adds a diction analysis drawn from Margaret Atwood’s actual text, the 9 documented AP Literature exam appearances of this book, and reading-difficulty guidance (Easy, 3/10) so students, teachers, and lifelong readers know what they are walking into.
“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.”
Short 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.
Detailed Summary
The Republic of Gilead rose from a coup against the United States government. Environmental collapse, falling birthrates, and fundamentalist Christian extremism combined to create the conditions: a ruling class (Commanders of the Faith) seized power, suspended the Constitution, and reorganized socie...
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis
If you liked The Handmaid's Tale, read next
Start with The Power by Naomi Alderman — A direct descendant of The Handmaid's Tale — written with Atwood as mentor — that asks what happens when women acquire the physical power advantage, and whether power itself is the problem.
For comparative essays, pair The Handmaid's Tale with
The strongest comparative pairing is 1984 (George Orwell) — The closest structural parallel — surveillance state, ideological re-education, resistance through sexuality — but Orwell's system targets everyone where Atwood's targets women specifically. Another productive pairing is Beloved (Toni Morrison) — Both novels about women whose reproductive bodies are owned by a system; both use fragmented, non-linear narration to represent trauma that cannot be told in sequence. For a third angle, contrast with Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) — Dystopia that also controls reproduction, but Huxley's system controls through pleasure where Gilead controls through pain — useful comparison for analyzing different mechanisms of social control.
Each of these pairings opens a clean thesis path on shared themes, period diction, or formal influence — useful for AP Lit / IB / first-year college comparative essays.
More from Margaret Atwood and the scholars who study Atwood
Other works by Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake (2003, 376 pages), The Blind Assassin (2000, 521 pages). Reading two or three of these in sequence reveals Margaret Atwood’s recurring obsessions and stylistic signatures more clearly than any single book can.
The standard scholarly entry points to Margaret Atwood’s work: Coral Ann Howells (University of Reading, Emerita) — The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (2006, ed.). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Margaret Atwood.