MARGARET ATWOOD

Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

Chapter 1: Night

Introduction

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has restored the United States of America. Because of unsafely reduced reproduction rates, Handmaids are allotted to accept young children for elite twosomes that have problem conceiving. Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a previous gospel vocalist and support for “traditional values.” Offred is not the narrator's genuine name—Handmaid titles comprise of the phrase “of” pursued by the title of the Handmaid's Commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right issue in her menstrual cycle, she should have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while Serena is seated behind her, retaining her hands. Offred's flexibility, like the flexibility of all women, is absolutely restricted. She can depart the dwelling only on buying journeys, the doorway to her room will not be absolutely close, and the Eyes, Gilead's mystery policeman force, watch her every public move. (Margaret 1998: 35-59)

As Offred notifies the article of her every day life, she often falls into flashbacks, from which the book reader can reconstruct the events premier up to the starting of the novel. In the vintage world, before Gilead, Offred had an activity with Luke, a wed man. He separated his wife and wed Offred, and they had a progeny together. Offred's mother was a lone mother and feminist activist. Offred's best ally, Moira, was fiercely independent. The architects of Gilead started their increase to power in an age of gladly accessible pornography, prostitution, and aggression against women—when contamination and chemical spills directed to falling fertility rates. (Margaret 1998: 35-59)

The innovative closes with an epilogue from 2195, after Gilead has dropped, in writing in the pattern of a address granted by Professor Pieixoto. He interprets the formation and culture of Gilead in target, analytical language. He talks about the implication of Offred's article, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He proposes that Nick organised Offred's get away but that her destiny after that is unknown. She could have got away to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured.

Chapter 1 Summary

Chapter 1, the lone segment of Section I, inserts a gymnasium view in which Alma, Janine, Dolores, Moira, June, and other Handmaids-in-training doze in a barracks placement under flannel slips and armed detachment bed wrappings and contemplate their yearnings for freedom. Like young women at a restrictive bivouac, they come to out to their sisters to discover their titles and to feel hands. The women, doubly defended by Aunts, equipped with electric driven beef cattle prods and whistles, and Angels, or sentries, out-of-doors the construction, obtain a short privilege — twice-daily strolls in twos on an adjacent football field. The inmates fantasize about making agreements with the sentries, using sex as a bartering medium.

There was a specific craving in the air that the women could still sense, though the room had been topped up with armed detachment cots and was ...