The Handmaid's Tale (1985) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

show spoilers

• Offred: Main character of the story. The protagonist was separated from her husband and daughter after the formation of the Republic of Gilead and is part of the first generation of Gilead's women: those who remember pre-Gilead times. Having proven fertile, she is considered an important commodity and has been placed as a handmaid in the home of the Commander Fred and his wife Serena Joy to bear a child for them (Serena Joy is said to be infertile)
• The High Commander: The head of the household
• Serena Joy: The Commander's Wife. A former televangelist, she is now a Wife in the fundamentalist theocracy she helped to create. She has the final say on any discipline for wrongdoings in the household.
• Nick: The Commander's household chauffeur. Nick lives above the garage. On Serena Joy's suggestion and arrangement, Offred starts a sexual relationship with him to try to increase her chances of getting pregnant and saving herself from being shipped to the ecological and nuclear wastelands of the Colonies.
• Moira: Offred's best friend from the earlier times. a close friend of Offred's since college, hinted in the book to be either Harvard University or Radcliffe College. An important aspect of Moira is her homosexuality and resistance to the new homophobia that rules society. Moira represents how the totalitarian state can destroy the hearts and characters of the most independent spirits. Moira, once strong and courageous, is now complacent and crushed.
• Aunt Lydia: Teacher at the Red Center
• Janine aka Ofwarren: Another of the Handmaids, was a the Red Center with Offred
• Luke: Offred's husband from the earlier time. She doesn't know what happened to him when they were captured. Luke was Offred's husband prior to the formation of the Republic. He had divorced his first wife to marry Offred, and since all divorces have been retroactively nullified by the Gilead government, Offred is considered to be an adulteress and her daughter a bastard.
• Ofglen: Offred's partner, they walk to the shops together each day. A neighbour of Offred's and a fellow Handmaid, she is partnered with Offred to do the shopping for the household each day, so that the Handmaids are never alone and can police each others' behaviour.
• Rita: Rita is the main cook in the Commander's house. She is the one that gives Offred the tokens to go shopping. She seems to dislike Offred.
• Cora: She is a Martha that helps cook and clean. Wants a baby to spoil.
• Professor Pieixoto: Explains that the Handmaid's Tale was discovered as a series of tapes. Talks about how they had to guess what order the tapes were in.
• Professor Gopal Chatterjee: From the Department of Philosphy
• Professor Sieglinda Van Boren: Add a description of this character.
• Professor Wade: A co-worker of professor Pieixoto's. Titled The Handmaids Tale.
• Wilfred Limpkin: Explains what he knows about two Commanders that may have been Offred's Commander. Explains what he thinks each Commander's role was, what he came up with, and why he thinks that.
• Frederick Judd: Suggested the use of an obscured pamphlet from a government agency on destabilization as the strategy handbook for the Sons of Jacob. Is suspected of organizing the President's Day Massacre.
• Aunt Elizabeth: One of the teachers at The Red Center

Quotes edit see section history

• “There can be no shadow unless there is also light.”

• “Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

• “The sea fisheries were defunct several years ago; the few fish they have now are from fish farms, and taste muddy. The news says the coastal areas are being "rested". Sole, I remember, and haddock, swordfish, scallops, tuna; lobsters, stuffed and baked, salmon, pink and fat, grilled in steaks. Could they all be extinct, like the whales? I've heard that rumor, passed on to me in souldless words, the lips hardly moving, as we stood in line outside, waiting for the store to open, lured by the picture of succulent white fillets in the window. They put the picture in the window when they have something, take it away when they don't. Sign language.”

  Offred

• “What we prayed for was emptiness, so we could be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies.”

• “We were a society dying of too much choice.”

• “Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere you'd come apart, you'd vaporize, there would be no pressure holding you together”

• “Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?”

• “Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.”

• “As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.”

• “Any news, now, is better than none.”

• “We've given them more than we've taken away.”

  the Commander

• “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum ("Don't let the bastards grind you down")”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

  Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers

• We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

• We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

• What was in them was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

• I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• You young people don't appreciate things, she'd say. You don't know what we had to go through, just to get you where you are. Look at him, slicing up the carrots. Don't you know how many women's lives, how many women's bodies, the tanks had to roll over just to get that far?

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• You can't help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn't do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

show spoilers

• The Republic of Gilead
• Wall: This was an actual wall where the Government would physically "hang" dead people to make an example of them, to show what could happen to others if they followed in these people's footsteps.
• Cambridge, MA: The novel is set in the Harvard Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Atwood studied at Radcliffe College, and many locations in the novel are recognizable. Fred's home is on the famous "Professor's Row"; and the Brattle Theatre, Memorial Hall and Widener Library make very prominent cameos.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Palimpsest: A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = (palin "again" + psao "I scrape"), and meant "scraped (clean and used) again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice. From Wikipeadia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments: Describe this theme.
• Language as a Tool of Power
• The Causes of Complacency
• Rape and Sexual Violence
• Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes
• Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies
• Harvard University
• The Handmaids’ Red Habits
• A Palimpsest
• The Eyes
• Feminism

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The Golden Compass, and followed by Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Preceded by Tiger Eyes, and followed by Friday Night Lights.

Preceded by Fahrenheit 451, and followed by As I Lay Dying.

Preceded by Contact, and followed by Perfume.

Preceded by The Joy Luck Club.

Preceded by Far from the Madding Crowd, and followed by Lord of the Flies.

Preceded by The Bell Jar, and followed by Testament of Youth.

Preceded by Walden, and followed by Jane Eyre.

Preceded by The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and followed by Blood Meridian.

Preceded by Dear John, and followed by Veronika Decides to Die.

Preceded by Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and followed by The Gunslinger.

Preceded by The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and followed by The Last Straw.

Preceded by The Master and Margarita, and followed by Danny, the Champion of the World.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Margaret Atwood (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Traduzione di Camillo Pennati (Translator) - From English to Italian

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Arthur C. Clarke Award (1987)
• Governor General's Literary Awards (1985: Fiction)
• Man Booker Prize (Finalist, 1986, Shortlist)
• Prometheus (Finalist, 1987: Best Novel)
• Nebula (Finalist, 1986: Best Novel)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (1987: Caribbean and Canada)
• Locus Science Fiction Award (Finalist, 1987)
• CBC Canada Reads (Finalist, 2002)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1986: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR9199.3.A8 H3165
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

I think this is an important book for young women to read. But I think they need to be in their late teens if not young adulthood. Some of the themes are very adult and some of the scenes are graphic.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( A ) › Atwood, Margaret
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Women's Fiction

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Handmaid's Tale (1990) (IMDb): Set in a Fascistic future America, The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of Kate, a handmaid. In this America, the religious right has taken over and gone hog-wild. Kate is a criminal, guilty of the crime of trying to escape from the US, and is sentenced to become a Handmaid. The job of a Handmaid is to bear the children of the man to whom she is assigned. After ruthless group training by Aunt Lydia in the proper way to behave, Kate is assigned as Handmaid to the Commander. Kate is attracted to Nick, the Commander's chauffeur. At the same time, a resistance movement begins to challenge the regime. Written by Reid Gagle Following a coup, America is a country still at war with itself and ruled by a repressive Bible-inspired regime. Past pollution means only 1% of women can bear children, and anyone committing a crime and found to be a potential mother is put into an institution run by 'Aunt Lydia' to be indoctrinated ready for this. One such is Kate, who then goes on to Fred, a high-up in the security forces, to attempt to procreate. Fred's wife Serena is jealous and vicious, and the State's grip seems to be tightening. But Kate still has her own mind, and is finding that some other people are prepared to resist. Written by Jeremy Perkins <jwp@aber.ac.uk>

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history