HMT - Structure/genre

Question 1

Genre > Dystopian fiction?

Answer 1

• The main features of a dystopia are evident in Gilead: patriarchal rule, totalitarianism and the erasure of individual difference.
• The Commander and his wife are high in the strict dystopian hierarchy of Gilead; Handmaids are given special status because of their potential for procreation.
• A significant dystopian feature of Gilead is state control of language through biblical rhetoric.
• Whether a text is dystopian or utopian depends on the narrator’s viewpoint: for Offred, Gilead is dystopian because she does not benefit from her new society.

Question 2

Structure > External and internal story?

Answer 2

• Offred’s external story is a bleak account of everyday experiences, often permeated with a sense of fear or despair.
• The internal narrative is Offred’s survival strategy where she expresses her emotions and desires.
• Offred tells the story of the loss of her loved ones through internal narrative, using flashback.
• Other external events such as Prayvaganzas or Salvagings are Gileadean constructions which reveal the nightmarish quality of the new social order.

Question 3

Language > the external?

Answer 3

• Offred’s daily life is described in fine detail, which both emphasises the extreme monotony of her life and heightens the sense of confinement she endures.
• The descriptions of the hanged men, and public ceremonies such as the Particicution and Salvagings, reveal the barbarity at the heart of Gilead.
• Clinical language is used to describe the monthly copulation ceremony, where the intimate act of sex becomes a bizarre, semi-public ritual.
• The secret outing to Jezebel’s blurs the boundaries between public and private. The descriptions of the hotel emphasise its familiarity for Offred.

Question 4

Language > the internal?

Answer 4

• The internal narrative offers us a patchwork of glimpses of Offred’s former life, through flashback.
• Three different versions of Luke’s story are presented, which function as psychological survival for Offred but also emphasise her anguish.
• Poetic imagery expresses Offred’s desires and emotions and constitutes her hidden resistance to the regime.
• The use of imagery from nature and the body can be viewed as a feminine voice of protest in a patriarchy.

Question 5

Language > other women?

Answer 5

• The flashback sections describe Moira in Offred’s former life using vibrant descriptive language; she is a colourful and increasingly heroic figure.
• Stories of other women form a subtext to Offred’s; her narrative is one which emphasises her fight for survival but others fade into silence.
• The unnamed woman, who occupied Offred’s room before her, is a ghostly presence throughout who foreshadows Offred’s possible fate.
• Vivid detail is used to describe Moira’s outfit at Jezebel’s. It is grotesque: its comic presentation reveals also the desperate state to which she is reduced.