The Handmaid's Tale: Difference between revisions

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The setting is the new [[People's Republic of Tyranny|Republic of Gilead]], a country which is at war, where the roles of society are firmly defined, and women have no rights -- especially not handmaids. Our protagonist is a woman who has been trained to be a handmaid, one who conceives and gives birth on behalf of those who are officially wives. A sharp-eyed reader might catch her name in the first chapter; the rest of us just know her as Offred, the name she uses as long as she's with Fred and his wife. Handmaids don't get permanent names.

Very popular in Anglophone high school English classes, although the confronting adult subject matter leads to a [[Moral Guardians|crusade to ban the book every five years or so]].

 

 

 

{{tropelist}}

** There's mention in the book of a school named "after the President they shot" still standing.

* [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]]: Women in Gilead are divided into castes, reflected by the color of robes they wear. [[Grande Dame|Wives]] wear blue, [[Nature Adores a Virgin|Daughters]] wear white, [[Drill Sergeant Nasty|Aunts]] wear brown, [[Feminine Women Can Cook|Marthas]] wear green, and Handmaids wear red. Econowives wear garish multi-color robes to show that they play multiple roles.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Pretty much so.

* [[Distant Finale]]: {{spoiler|After (quite a bit less than) 100 years Gilead collapses but the Gileadean civil war with dissident groups has exhausted the Western powers and formerly "3rd World" nations are now dominant (e.g. somehow ''Nunavut'' is now the academic centre of the world).}}

* [[Mandatory Motherhood]]: Played straight in Gilead, because of the fact many high-ranking women are infertile or too old to get pregnant, so going on the Biblical precedent of Rachel and Jacob, they force "handmaids" to bear a child in their place.

* [[No Ending]]: Subverted immediately by the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] epilogue that follows on the next page.

** Subverted in the 1990 film adaption, Offred's name is {{spoiler|Kate}}

* [[No-Paper Future]]

** Also, Jews are officially "repatriated" to Israel. (Unofficially, many of the ships carrying them are scuttled at sea.)

* [[Rule 34]]: Or at least evidence it exists inside Gilead.

* [[State Sec]]: <s> None</s> [[Blatant Lies|All are safe]] under ''[[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|The]] [[Faceless Eye|Eyes]] [[Secret Police|of]] [[Corrupt Church|God]]''.

* [[Stealth Parody]]: Very few people seem to get the digs Atwood puts in at certain aspects of radical feminism.

** She even says "This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction." There's some initial ambiguity as to whether this refers solely to the following scene or to the entire tale, but she goes on to explain in general terms why her recollections can't possibly be complete and accurate.

* [[The Un-Reveal]]: Offred's name.

** Oddly enough, in the film adaption Offred is called {{spoiler|Kate}}.

* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: For a society to be as it is in the book everyone who didn't belong to a particular sect of Christianity would have to be killed/deported/enslaved, it would also require everyone of that sect of Christianity to be fine with the killing/deporting/enslavement it would also require a lot of corpses because there would be no way in hell for this to go easily, scare or not.

 

{{Arthur C. Clarke Award}}

{{The Big Read}}

[[Category:Lit Fic]]

[[Category:The Eighties]]

[[Category:School Study Media]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]

[[Category:The Great American Read]]

[[Category:Literature of the 1980s]]

[[Category:English Literature]]

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