Handmaid's Tale Characters - Offred Flashcards
Whos is Offred?
The main protagonist and narrator who is trapped in Gilead as a handmaid
Once married to Luke and had a daughter
She is a survivor from the past and uses memories of her husband and child to help her carry on in the present
What is the function of the handmaid?
Under the terms of the totalitarian Gileadean state, Offred’s individuality is erased and replaced with the status of a generic woman for breeding
She is denied all her individual rights and her fate is to be virtually imprisoned in the domestic spaces of the home and only allowed out with a shopping partner and for Handmaid’s official excursions
What is the significance of Offred’s name?
Offred’s identity as an individual has been erased and she has been forbidden o use her own name
She keeps her name like a buried treasure:
“I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasures I’ll come back to dig up, one day”
She gives her real name to Nick as a love token and Nick uses it as an exchange of trust
Offred doesn’t trust the reader with her real name which is a sign of her fear in a dangerous situation
What is the importance of Offred’s psychological freedom?
Offred retains her psychological freedom
She is a survivor of the past, and it is her power to remember which helps her cope in the present
She reconstructs the past through flashbacks
Offred succeeds in simultaneously inhabiting two spaces: her handmaid spaces, and the freer, happier spaces of memory
How is Offred’s resistance to the regime reflected through her observations?
“There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light”
Her response to the moon is also poetic:
“a wishing moon, a silver of ancient rock, a goddess, a wink. The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway”
This ironic observation is typical of Offred’s character and reveals her refusal to give up on life
How does Offred show hope for the future through her narration?
Offred succeeds in finding new hope for the future in her relationship with Nick
Her first encounter with him is in the dark, where fear and sexual risk exert a powerful charge which runs through the novel to its end
Their love represents the forbidden combination of desire and rebellion
Being with Nick allows Offred to hope; she even comes to terms with her new, reduced circumstances in the present
