The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Question 1

Quotes (power)

Answer 1

“It was best not to speak unless they asked you a direct question.”
- Controls rebellion through restricted speech/communication, enforces strict social hierarchy and lack of power.
“A Guardian detailed to the Commander does the heavy digging; the Commander’s Wife directs, pointing with her stick.”
- Recognisable only by rank, enforces social hierarchy, stripped of identity, false sense of power for Wives
“She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so.”
- Offred’s place in Gilead reinforced, Serena Joy knows indoctrination has not been successful

Question 2

Handmaids’ uniforms

Answer 2

Physical value (fertility) > Human value (Thoughts/opinions)
- Impure, undeserving of a nice life
- Costumed -> tolerable (uncomfortable to admit human nature of Handmaids, given sexual slavery)
- Restriction of power of women’s bodies
Traditional beauty standards discarded (modesty)
- Indoctrination successful -> Offred’s discomfort in Jezebel’s
- Dehumanised, collectivised, homogenous (Concentration camps -> Removal of identity)
- Juxtaposition pre-Gilead/Gilead
- Reader’s knowledge frame of feminist/women’s progress -> links between own world and horrific dystopia, motivates reader to take action
- Emphasised by speed of change, closeness of Gileadean regime to past

Question 3

Section I : Night

Answer 3

“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”
- Collective pronoun “we”
- Past tense participle of static material verb -> Undertones of death imply death of identity
- Modified by primary auxiliary & adverb emphasises rate of change.
- Definite article -> importance of school, childhood (safety, innocence) -> Emphasises lack of security in Gilead
- Concrete noun -> subverted reader’s understanding of meaning -> alienates the reader
“The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it…”
- Pre-modifying adjective -> Care and appreciation of material value (Foregrounds importance of material value -> Handmaids in Gilead)
- Covers up the past -> concealed Handmaid’s true fate (propaganda?)
- Suffocated wood (plastic coating) -> Natural destruction (dystopian convention)
- Stripes and stars - American flag - Patriotism & religious fundamentalism
- Material verb -> childish & impermanent
“for the games that were formerly played there.”
- Plural abstract noun -> Emphasises choice pre-Gilead

Question 4

Section II : Shopping

Answer 4

Title -> focus on gender roles, bargaining in power struggle

Sarcastic, mocking tone, Offred’s perceived superiority to regime “I know why there is no glass…”

Question 5

Chapter 1

Answer 5

Introduced to nameless narrator held captive in gymnasium
US Army cots in rows
Olfactory imagery (smells of past: chewing gum, sweat, perfume-girls attended dances in the hall previously)
Longing for lives lived, isolation.
Nostalgia (‘the yearning, for something that always about to happen’)
‘We’ used excessively - collectivisation
Captives all females learnt from names lip read ‘Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.’
Threat builds as inhabitants kept in low light, movements controlled, prevented from speaking.
Aunts introduced, ‘patrolling’ with ‘cattle prods’ in a building with ‘chain-link fence topped with barbed wire’ - Imprisonment (reasons unclear)
Angels introduced completes unease, significance of sexuality & power ‘we still have our bodies’ (contact made, trade reached)
Resistance of human spirit (alternative comms ‘we learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semi-darkness, we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space.’
No reference to former birth name. June is the only name not accounted for in the rest of the novel, assumed narrator’s true name.

Question 6

Chapter 2

Answer 6

Sparse white room, house w/ narrator unwilling resident
Bleakness continues - sterile room (prison/mental institution) - white, lack of glass in picture on wall and shatterproof glass in windows that partially open.
‘the shape of a wreath’ ‘those other escapes…given a cutting edge’ - existence avoided by suicide
Flowers as motif introduced, picture on wall. ‘still allowed’
Furniture polish smell, highlights importance, only sense regime cannot regulate.
Intention of survival of ‘reduced circumstances’
‘I intend to last…I am alive, I live, I breathe.’
Comfort in flowers and sunlight.
‘The return to traditional values’ - unaware of patriarchy
Lack of mirrors, bells used to measure time (nunnery comparison)