THT Themes

Question 1

What are the four major themes in the Handmaids Tale?

Answer 1

• Feminism
• Politics
• Religion
• Ecology

Question 2

What is the significance of religion in THT?

Answer 2

• the use of bible-based rhetoric as propaganda for Gilead can be seen as an abuse of the Bible rather than an endorsement of its teachings

Question 3

What does THT as a dystopia offer to the reader?

Answer 3

• a model for the future through a satiric attack on present society
• delivers a strong warning against the consequences of particular kinds of political and social behaviour

Question 4

What does THT offer as a political and social commentary?

Answer 4

a didactic message to the reader

Question 5

What is the significance of Gileadean rhetoric?

Answer 5

words such as ‘Aunts’, ‘Angels’, ‘Salvagings’ take words with reassuring emotional connotations and distorts them into euphamisms for the instruments of oppression

Question 6

What society did Offred live in pre-Gilead?

Answer 6

• the permissive society of the 1970s and 1980s

Question 7

How does THT have links to American Puritan history?

Answer 7

• connections to seventeenth-century New England’s witch hunts

Question 8

How does Atwood treat Feminism throughout THT?

Answer 8

She refuses to simplify the gender debate throughout

Question 9

What is the significane of the individual handmaids to the theme of feminism?

Answer 9

• the positions of the handmaids are varied
• e.g. Janine who accepts her role as female victim, Moira who is a radical lesbian feminist, Offred who holds a passive role throughout the novel
• their stories highlight the paradoxes and dilemmas within contemporary feminism