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    THT - Summary

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    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of Gilead, a totalitarian future America where women have been stripped of their rights. The protagonist Offred is forced to become a "handmaid" whose role is to bear children for elite families due to declining birth rates. Offred recounts her experiences living under the oppressive Gilead regime and her resistance to their control over women. The novel serves as a warning about how repressive societies can rise and a call to protect women's rights.

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    THT - Summary

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    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of Gilead, a totalitarian future America where women have been stripped of their rights. The protagonist Offred is forced to become a "handmaid" whose role is to bear children for elite families due to declining birth rates. Offred recounts her experiences living under the oppressive Gilead regime and her resistance to their control over women. The novel serves as a warning about how repressive societies can rise and a call to protect women's rights.

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    Summary The handmaid’s tale

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    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of Gilead, a totalitarian future America where women have been stripped of their rights. The protagonist Offred is forced to become a "handmaid" whose role is to bear children for elite families due to declining birth rates. Offred recounts her experiences living under the oppressive Gilead regime and her resistance to their control over women. The novel serves as a warning about how repressive societies can rise and a call to protect women's rights.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    36 views2 pages

    THT - Summary

    Uploaded by

    jc452xpfzf
    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of Gilead, a totalitarian future America where women have been stripped of their rights. The protagonist Offred is forced to become a "handmaid" whose role is to bear children for elite families due to declining birth rates. Offred recounts her experiences living under the oppressive Gilead regime and her resistance to their control over women. The novel serves as a warning about how repressive societies can rise and a call to protect women's rights.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    The Handmaid's Tale: summary

    Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale is often described as a dystopia,


    that is to say a very negative vision of the future. The author herself calls it
    "speculative ction", because according to her it deals with possible futures. In
    other words it serves as a warning about how things can easily and quickly go
    wrong. In any case, she declared in an interview that she wanted to present a
    dystopia from a female point of view : "The majority of dystopias – Orwell's
    included – have been written by men and the point of view has been male."
    The story is narrated by a woman named O red, who is the main character. It is
    set in the future, in the Republic of Gilead, formerly Cambridge Massachusetts in
    what once was the US. The US government has been overthrown by a coup and
    replaced by a theocratic dictatorship. M. Atwood herself explains that "The
    Republic of Gilead is built on a foundation of the 17th-century Puritan roots that
    have always lain beneath the modern-day America we thought we knew". Under
    this new regime, women are no longer allowed to work for pay, to have bank
    accounts, vote or make their own decisions. They are assigned to di erent
    categories : the wives, married to commanders, Marthas who are servants and
    handmaids. Because the environment has been poisoned the population is
    shrinking so women who can have children are forced to become "handmaids"
    and produce babies. They do not get to keep these babies who are raised by the
    wives. O red, before the revolution, had had an affair with a married man, Luke,
    whom she eventually married. They were caught trying to escape Gilead. They
    were arrested and O red was sent to a re-education center to become a handmaid
    for one of the commanders. She is called O red because the Commander she
    belongs to is called Fred (so she is "of Fred", she is his property). In order to
    become pregnant, she is required to participate in a monthly ceremony, which
    she describes as "the Commander […] fucking the lower part of my body. […] This
    is serious business. The Commander, too, is doing his duty." O red gets into
    trouble by disobeying the strict rules of Gilead and in the end is taken away. In the
    epilogue, which is supposed to be a transcript of a symposium on Gileadean
    Studies years later, a professor explains that O red's tale has survived. However,
    no one knows what happened to O red : "Did our narrator reach the outside world
    safely and build a new life for herself ? Or was she discovered […] arrested, sent to
    the Colonies or to Jezebel's, or even executed ?"

    Quotations about The Handmaid's Tale


    Literary critic, Naomi R Mercer, about The Handmaid's Tale :
    "Atwood is a master story-teller"
    "It's resistance, the actions of people who dare to break the political, intellectual
    and sexual rules that drives the plot of The Handmaid's Tale."
    "The novel's exploration of … how power can be wielded unfairly makes Atwood's
    chilling vision of a dystopian regime ever relevant."
    The American novelist E.L. Doctorow wrote about The Handmaid's Tale:
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    "This visionary novel, in which God and Government are joined, and America is run
    as a Puritanical Theocracy, can be read as a companion volume to Orwell's 1984.
    […] it evokes the same kind of horror…"

    Margaret Atwood, when she was asked if The Handmaid's Tale is a feminist novel,
    replied :
    "If you mean an ideological tract in which all women are angels and/or so
    victimized they are incapable of moral choice, no. If you mean a novel in which
    women are human beings — with all the variety of character and behavior that
    implies — and are also interesting and important, and what happens to them is
    crucial to the theme, structure and plot of the book, then yes."
    She adds : "But there's a literary form I haven't mentioned yet : the literature of
    witness. O red records her story as best she can; then she hides it, trusting that it
    may be discovered later, by someone who is free to understand it and share it.
    This is an act of hope."
    "In the wake of the recent American election, fears and anxieties proliferate. In
    this divisive climate, […] many, I would guess — are writing down what is
    happening as they themselves are experiencing it."

    VOCABULARY
    to go wrong : mal tourner
    formerly : anciennement
    to overthrow : renverser
    to lie, lay, lain : se trouver
    beneath : en dessous
    to shrink : rétrécir
    to raise : élever
    a air : liaison
    to belong : appartenir
    pregnant : enceinte
    to be required to : être obligé de
    duty : devoir (moral ou civique)
    to dare : oser
    to wield : exercer
    relevant : pertinent
    behavior : comportement
    witness : témoin
    to share : partager
    hope : espoir
    in the wake of : à la suite de
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