INTRODUCTION

1.1 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Atwood’s childhood
was tranquil and somewhat idyllic when not being homeschooled by her mother. She is
the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. She is also one
of Canada’s leading literary critics. Frequently centering on the problems faced by
women in society Her works have been characterized as having a "feminist" focus.

1.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Margaret Atwood wrote the novel in mid -1980s and calls the novel a ‘speculative
fiction’ which means it theorizes about possible future scenarios. There were stories of
abortion and contraception being outlawed in Romania and reports from Canadian
government lamenting over its falling birth rates . In US, Republicans attempted to
withhold federal funding from clinics that provided abortion services. The events that
occurred in the handmaid’s tale are based on these reports but filtered through Atwood’s
authorial lens. She weaved the real incidents together and imagined a nightmare of
inequality and oppression. Margaret Atwood did not include anything that human beings
had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not
already exist.i

2. PLOT

The handmaid’s tale is set in the republic of Gilead, an ultra conservative theocracy that
staged a military coup within former US territory. Much of the land is radioactive or
otherwise poisoned by toxic waste ,as a result the birth rates have fallen dramatically
Infertile women, homosexuals, political dissidents, supporters of abortion and non-
whites have been sent to toxic dumping grounds. The book is narrated by a handmaid
whose title connotes the man she’s assigned to bear children for through acts of rape.
She’s called Offred, to signify that she is the property “of Fred” Waterford, an elite
commander in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead. Offred had been married to Luke, a man
who was married once before, and after the couple and their daughter are caught trying to
escape to Canada Offred becomes a handmaid. these women are renamed for the
commander that they serve . Women who have been involved in extramarital affairs or
second marriages prior to the revolution but seem capable of reproducing are forced to
become Handmaids.Their purpose is to provide healthy babies for commanders and their
wives. Women married to lower ranking men are labeled ‘econowives’ .Martha’s
servants in the commander’s houses and Aunts instructors of handmaids and overseers of
executions .The narration, while dark, has an ambiguous ending . It is for the reader to
decide ,the fate of Offred. It's not sunshine and roses by any means, but there's hope for
those who believe.

Character sketches

Offred:

Offred was an editor in her past life. Unlike the usual central characters of every book
she is not an outsize figure. She represents an ordinary woman with extraordinary
resilience. Her isolation and the fact that she was trying to hold onto herself and her
memories in a world that was trying to erase them proves the aforementioned. The sheer
amount of time she spent with no companionship or activities was messing with her
mind. She would also find herself slipping into Gilead's worldview and try to justify the
despotism of the regime against her will. She's a woman without an agency in a strict,
patriarchal society. She's reduced to a sex slave whom the government pimps out to its
high-ranking members for breeding purposes.
“I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed,
scratched with a pin or maybe just a fingernail, in the corner where the darkest shadow
fell: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”

The message she finds scribbled on the cupboard wall "nolite te bastardes
carborundorum." That's not a message of a dauntless and bold revolution rather it's one
of quiet strength and resistance. She's just another victim of the Gilead regime trying to
keep her identity and sanity in a society that is trying to dehumanize her and take her
identity . A puppet in the world where women have lost all humanization and have
become the property of the state. Offred does inspire - she inspires in her ways of trying
to survive a unsurvivable life. She inspires in the way she internally fights against a
system she can't physically fight against. You see her forcibly oppressed humanity
fighting to break free in the ways she observes the world and reflects on the situation
she's trapped in.

“There is loathing in her voice, as if the touch of my flesh sickens and contaminates her.
I untangle myself from her body, stand up; the juice of the Commander runs down my
legs. Before I turn away I see her straighten her blue skirt, clench her legs together; she
continues lying on the bed, gazing up at the canopy above her, stiff and straight as an
effigy. Which of us is it worse for, her or me?”

the above snippet from the novel highlights how despite of the height of the horrors of
the brutally oppressive regime , Offred does not lose the touch of humanity . She
empathizes with the Commander’s wife.

Moira

We see here Offred trying to take control of the narrative; trying to tell a story that is daring
and spectacular, where the protagonist wins or at least takes a lot of bad guys out with her.

But she can't. Those traditional narratives of the hero's journey aren't available to her
because they aren't true to her experienc

Fred Waterford , the commander

 Aunt Lydia, the terrifying, vindictive architect of Gilead’s system for training women for
reproductive servitude

3. LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLS,MOTIFS AND THEMES

Social setup

She wanted to present dystopia from a female point of view.A dystopian society shows us
the signposts pointing to a disaster, remind us of human resilience , help us think through
the consequences of social and political change and also fill us with pure and
unadulterated terror. Dystopian fiction has little whispers and echoes of reality in
between the lines of the story. Warnings of the ways in which the society can set
themselves up on the path to destruction.

Themes

Patriarchy

Hypocrisy

Freedom

Symbols

Eyes

The colour ‘red’

4.EXPOSITION
our culture prizes , even worships ,women’s power to bear children ,yet elevates infant
and fetal care over maternal and marginalizes and dehumanizes mothers. with the erosion
of reproductive rights, separation of parents from their children at the border and the
targeting of minorities by white supremacists. It's an outrageous, unimaginable future,
but at the same time somehow also a familiar, not-so-distant one.

5.CRITICISM

Thirty-four years ago she published The Handmaid’s Tale, a work of speculative fiction
imagining a repressive theocracy in the United States, and ever since she’s been name-
checked virtually every time reproductive rights are restricted, or biblical language is
invoked to justify appalling actions

6 CONCLUSION
i
https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/