Storytelling

Question 1

Unreliable narrative because of a withdrawal of language

Answer 1

• offred is an unreliable narrator for a number of reasons; she has no idea what is occurring in gilead as she is oppressed and has the news withheld from her
• because of this she is extremely apologetic and confused as she longs for information

Question 2

Quotes supporting offreds unreliable narrative as an impact of her restraint from true knowledge

Answer 2

‘Here is what I’d like to tell. I’d like to tell a story about how Moira escaped, for good this time. […] But as far as I know that didn’t happen. I don’t know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw her again.’
‘I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.’

Question 3

Offreds unreliable narrative as a means of controlling her story for power

Answer 3

Offred is able to look at herself externally as if she is not truly present and thus is not submitting to gilead. Offred has hope that she is taking hold of the narrative and thus there is hope for her future. This,offred uses her unreliable narrative as cixous theorised to write her own distinct story free of the restraints of a patriarchy

Question 4

Offreds unreliable narration as a means of controlling her own distinctly female experience and subverting the regime

Answer 4

‘I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling’
‘I dont have to tell it’
- she has the power to reveal what parts of her story she chooses to and can also keep parts hidden, thus she has the power to share her story free of gileadian restraint
-Luce Irigaray’s works, such as This Sex Which Is Not One (1977), advocate for forms of expression that break free fromlinearity and embrace the multiplicity of female experiences.

Question 5

Offreds unreliable narrative as a cause of the rearranged tapes

Answer 5

• later we find out that we dont truly have the authentic offred because her story is passed through vehicle of the thoughts of futuristic men who dont truly know her
• ‘the tapes were arranged in no particular order’,
  -‘it was up to Professor Wade and myself to arrange the blocks of speech in the order in which they appeared to go’

Question 6

Attwood presents handmaids as storytelling a cautionary tale, speculative fiction

Answer 6

-attwood lives in a far right American government and is extremely worried both of the rise of the religious far right in the face of apathy and the environment, as an avid campaigner for Greenpeace
- handmaids tale is at its core a piece of speculative fiction where sstorytelling is used as a caution of real life events

Question 7

Quotes for how attwood uses storytelling of the handsmaida tale as speculative fiction to warn against the effects of apathy on society and the environment

Answer 7

• ‘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?’ The physical imagery is cautionary and calls to the more brutalist first wave feminism movement such as the suffragettes, by setting the flashbacks in a very modern appearing time attwood evokes fear at the idea of the apathy of many of her readers
• ‘guess that’s how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.’ Shows how fast change can come about and how quickly change in a theological totalitarian government can come. Again rings true to the modern world as the technological shift at the time was already seeing the loss of portable money when the credit card was created in the 50s
• attwood sets the book in Cambridge with the authorial purpose of reminding the readers of when the puritans banished any religious and moral opposition
  – ‘they reckon you’ve got three years maximum’ shows the dangers of sciences capabilities and how it can so easily end in death
• ‘your nose falls off and your skin peels away like rubber gloves’ the grotesque simile here presents a fear of the extent of science as it completely morphs the human body into something not of true identity, showing how science can completely corrupt the human race.