A summary of each chapter in the Handmaid’s tale, including quotes, language tips and themes.
Imagery and characters are discussed as well as the context of the book.
The Handmaids Tale: Themes, Symbols, Characters, Quotes and Structure of a Literary Essay
Essay AP Literature and Composition The Handmaid's Tale, ISBN: 9781473546967
Essay AP Literature and Composition The Handmaid's Tale, ISBN: 9781473546967
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The Handmaid’s Tale
By Margaret Atwood
SPECULATIVE FICTION
- The event or society is more important than the character or the plot
- The author ponders the result of changing reality or possibilities
COMMON THEMES IN DYSTOPIAN WORLDS
- Governmental control - information, thoughts and freedom is censored through the use of
propaganda
- Environmental destruction - fear of the outside world and a mistrust of the natural world
- Loss of individualism - citizens are dehumanised
- Society is the antagonist - society believes that their world mirrors a Utopia
- Survival (citizens have to fend for themselves)
- Technological control - perceived surveillance of the people
- Conformity - individualism and dissent is demonised
- Uniform
- Hierarchy
- Rituals
- Language
Written with the intention to predict what would happen to our society if we do not change.
The building blocks for Gilead already existed in 1985 America, and none of the themes or
premises were made up - all were taken from actual events in history.
Only put in things that people had already done
SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS:
Clothings and dress
Red
Flowers
Time and waiting
Thunder and waiting
Dreams and storms
THEMES
Power
Hierarchy
Misogyny
Hypocrisy
Rape
Sexual violence
Language
Waiting
VOCABULARY
- Prayvaganza - mass prayer meetings with a sermon from the commander. Often held in
celebration of arranged mass marriages.
- Men’s events - commemorate military victories
- Women’s events - group weddings and sometimes converted fertile nuns who become
handmaids.
- Salvaging - euphemism for executions
- Men - women forbidden, executed convicts displayed on wall.
- Women - run by aunts and handmaids are forced to participate by playing a role in the actual
execution. Executed women are often drugged rst to keep them from causing trouble.
fi
, Handmaids are not fed breakfast to prevent them from throwing up. Aunts no longer list the
crimes because it encourages copycats.
- Puritanism - people moved to America after the split between the Catholicism and protestant.
People became very pious and believed it was sinful to have worldly pleasure (laziness is a sin)
Behaviour or Beliefs based in strict principles and morales especially the idea that one should
avoid physical pleasure
- American dream.
- Theocracy
Biblical expressions
- Greeting: ‘blessed be the fruit’, response: ‘May the Lord open’ - greeting is rooted in fertility
- ‘Praise be’ - expression of thankfulness
- ‘Under his eye’ - hello or goodbye, conations of god watching - masculine and linked to ‘the
eyes’ and the government constantly watching
- Madonna v whore complex
Hierarchy of Men
- Commanders of the faithful - unsure what this ruling class actually does
- The Eyes - intelligence agency, attempt to discover rule breakers
- Angels - soldiers, ghting all along the edge of Gilead where there has been resistance
- The Guardians - menial labour and functions (Nick)
- Gender traitors - participate in homosexual or related activities, hanged on the Wall or sent to
the Colonies (idea of clear gender roles that each should ful l)
Hierarchy of Women
- Wives - in theory, at top of hierarchy of women, married to commanders, blue for the Virgin
Mary
- Handmaids - fertile women, role to bare women for the wives, red for menstruation as well as
romantic and sexuality - loss of identity and sexuality because of habit
- Aunts - some authority and autonomy due to their role, hold power over jezebels and
handmaids, only group of women allowed to read, trained to control the handmaids and instil a
sense of honour among them (only other choice is the colony as barren women), brown for
military connotations, cattle prods to punish handmaids
- Marthas - domestic skills, limited to roles, green
- Econowives - married to men outside of the ruling elite, perform multiple roles such as
domestic duties and childbearing - therefore considered less
- Jezebels - Commanders give information and able to smoke and drink, transgressors against
the regime and chose prostitution over the colonies, limited freedom controlled by aunts, wear
garish costumes - hyper-sexualised
- Unwomen - leftovers, no value in society, sent to the colonies to clear waste, feminists, infertile,
nuns (catholic), widows, political transgressors of the regime, prostitutes
Time the novel is set, Gilead is still new. Th society is still structuring where everyone ts in a
hierarchy.
ANALYSIS:
Extract from Genesis
Extract from Jonathon Swift - satirist
Su proverb
Unreliable narrator
Dedications
- To people she doesn’t know personally.
- Mary Webster accused of witchcraft twice. Beaten and hanged - survived (half hanged Mary
poem)
Chapter one
- Rachel and leah centre (biblical story) - in an old gymnasium
fi fi fi fi
, - History like an after image
- Lights turned down but not out - never able to hide always being watched
- Military control imagery - rations like a tornado - state of trauma
- Direct speech - the regime
- Electric cattle prods- “no guns though, even they could not be trusted with guns” - 2nd
amendment rights, right to bear arms against the government - women cant rise up
- Only allowed out twice a day - everyone’s freedom is limited - the entire system is the
antagonist. People perpetuate system (wives)
- Don’t speak don't engage = no humanity
- Alma, Moira, Dolores, Janine, June - someone knows you exist = identity
- Aunts only ever call them ‘girls’
Why begin with a memory? This memory and this novel… - detached nature of time
Rationing her thoughts - not much is happening in the present
“Removed anything you can tie a rope to” - your life is not your own
Chapter two
- shopping
- Describe room - window seat, partly open window which can make the curtains move (separate
the movement through active sentence) - stagnant
- “Return to the traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
Night - very short
Shopping
Day - very long
Part of waiting period
Historical notes - not necessarily in chronological order
Chapter 3
Sitting - like a child
Only referred to as girls by Aunt Lydia
Yearning for sisterly connection
The choice between two bad options is not a choice
Power of names - Serena Joy is just the Commander’s wife - removed name. Even women at the
top have no identity other than that of their husbands. Continues to maintain the system.
Chapter 4
- introduction to Nick guardian - low down and hasn’t been given a wife at any point
- Immediately a irtatious relationship and he initiates contact with him (why?) - trauma bond
- O red is cautious throughout. Aware of the risks
- No colour separation for men - all black
- Ofglen - “a nondescript woman” - the goal. No meaningful conversation
- Handmaids made to feel special for serving the traumatic circumstances of their training and
position - contributes to the culture of Stockholm syndrome created - a love for the very thing
that keeps you captive (e ective dictatorship)
- Pursuit of human connection - reader is exposed to all of O red’s invasive thoughts
- Uniform = devoid of sexuality. Yet O red uses it as a show of her sexuality and the power of
women - tease. Men also lack sexual freedom.
- Guilt at thoughts
Chapter 5
- Women were not safe in the 80s, but they are ‘safe’ in gilead, despite the restriction of freedom
- “Swells triumphantly” - an achievement. Others comment that Ofwarren is a show o - these
hardships do not unite the women but make them envious. “Now that she’s the carrier of life,
she is closer to death.” This highlights the bene ts that pregnant handmaids experience.
ff
fl ff ff fi ff ff
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