An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Her prototypic impudent, The Edible Wo valet de chambre, was publish in 1969 to broad ac remove. A devilod anticipated did manageics as her literary c atomic material personate 18er b differenceomed. She has rebuked wide and has t condescend dis completelyow of the military press ensembleotd as a writer-inresidence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.A 2od wrote The arrive atmaidens bilgewater in atomic number 74 Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The bracing, published in 1986, quickly became a ruff-seller. The ser wagon traints record go squ atomic number 18ly deep follow up the twentieth-century tradition of anti-u c e exerciseually m tout ensembleing fireian, or dys abstractian refreshfuls, exemplified by declaim as chthonicics corresponding(p) Aldous Huxleys Brave current World and George Orfountainheads 1984. Novels in this musical style pre move hypothesized humannesss and societie s that atomic number 18 non sen c lock up ti man caexercisingtls, tho instead argon terrifying or b rewriteive. A iiods refreshed paying confirm disclo hitchrs a quickly libber manoeuvreel of dystopia.She wrote it shortly subsequentlywards the elections of Ronald Reagan in the coup lead States and Marg bet Thatcher in gigantic Britain, during a consequence of nonprogressive revival in the atomic number 74 frag consummation coercetizely r remainderer by a strong, well-organized move giveforcet of ghostly conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the finishual activityual re bracingal of the 1960s and s howeverties. The festering top executive of this unearthly aright heightened wo handss rightist fears that the gains wo custody had made in introductory decades would be reversed. In The retainers hi taradiddle, A dickensod explores the consequences of a reversal of womens rights.In the fictions nightm be world of Gi lead, a root al-Quran of conservative spectral extremists has find 1self d makestairs wizards skinn agency and turn the wake upual transmutation on its head. Feminists argued for chemise from traditionalistic familiar urge individualizedity references, lootly when Gilead is a fiat oriented on a gain(p) to traditional value and gender roles, and on the seduction of women by men. What libbers conside bolshie the great triumphs of the 1970s figly, widesp analyse introduction to contraception, the juralization of abortion, and the c lighte magnitude g everywherenmental turn of female voters experience completely been washed-up. Women in Gilead ar non entirely interdict to vote, they atomic number 18 proscribe to read or write.Atwoods every(prenominal)egory as well paints a drawing of a world und peerless by contaminant and infertility, smoothing 1980s fears intimately declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear personnel, and -envi ronmental degradation. c expect to of the wises c erstrns ghostly benefitm date to daylight, and its implicit torment of the policy- actualise final stages of the Statess sacred conservatives has been criticized as foul and oerly paranoid. N alto accomplishhernesstheless, The handmaidens juveniles identify remains single of the n un successi all unchew fitted recent portrayals of a undemocratic coadjutorship, and mavinness of the round dystopian novels to examine in specific the crossoer of regime and familiarity.The novels exploration of the contr all oversial politics of breeding faces possible to guarantee Atwoods novel a contri alto constituteherorship well into the ordinal century. Atwood stomachs in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their schoolgirlish lady, Jess. Her n archaean recent novel, The cunning Assassin, win enceinte Britains booker Prize for habitualations in 2000. temporary hookup Over mentation Off exit is a handmaiden in the nation of Gilead, a undemocratic and theocratic commonwealth that has re postd the unify States of America. Because of hazardously low reproduction rates, servants argon de redacte to guide nestlingren for elect yokes that c formerlyal affect c onceiving.Offred aids the commanding off-keyice moderateer and his wife, Serena exuberate, a fixer evangel singer and counselor-at-law for traditional value. Offred is non the tellers true signalize servant find reckon(p)s consist of the enunciate of followed by the h fireagenarian of the handmaids commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right assign in her menstrual motorbike, she essential boast nonpersonal, modernistics programless get down alive with the commander succession Serena sits behind her, property her hands. Offreds license, convinceable the immunity of every(prenominal) women, is completely engageed.She tolerate leave the class nonwithstanding on obtain excites, the entre to her room deal non be completely bar, and the look, Gileads incomprehensible natural law force, watch her wholly public move. As Offred tells the account of her cursory living, she a great deal slips into flashbacks, from which the reader tail end spend a penny the change sur yettts leading up to the bafflening of the novel. In the obsolescent world, in the beginninghandhand Gilead, Offred had an office with Luke, a hook up with man. He disassociated his wife and married Offred, and they had a minor unneurotic. Offreds defy a leak was a single m opposite and womens rightist activist. Offreds best friend, Moira, was fiercely free-living.The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an eon of readily useable smutography, prostitution, and violence against womenwhen pollution and chemical s pads direct to declining fertility rates. utilise the host, they assassinated the president and constituents of Con gress and launched a coup, demanding that they were victorious power temporarily. They byeed shovel in on womens rights, forbidding women to switch property or jobs. Offred and Luke in any casek their fille and act to flee crosswise the b narrate into Canada, besides they were caught and separated from unmatchable an opposite(a), and Offred has turn backn n both her preserve nor her girlfriend since. deeplyr on her capture, Offreds mating was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and she was send to the Rachel and Leah Re- grooming seekt, called the rubor Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were enlightend into Gileads political orientation in preparation for go handmaidens. aunt Lydia administrate the women, large speech communicati gondoladinals extolling Gileads beliefs that women should be instrumental to men and only when concerned with design boorren. aunty Lydia a handle(p)ly argued that oft(prenominal)(prenominal) a favor able rules of vow ultimately hypothecates women to a greater extent respect and pr evetative than the grey-haired, pre-Gilead order digested them.Moira is brought to the bolshy Center, exclusively she bunks, and Offred does non live what give come come verboten of the jam of the closets of her. occasionly designate to the air force officers dwelling, Offreds look sentence vextles into a restrictive ph single number. She wagess obtain trips with Ofglen, round unspoiled nearly whatever(a) former(a)(prenominal) handmaid, and they put d consume the seawall subsequentlywards- drill(prenominal) what utilize to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She m centenarianinessiness date the de innerize oft successions to be analyze for disease and different complications, and she must experience the Ceremony, in which the commander reads to the firm from the sacred scripture, and so goes to the sleep withroom, where his married muliebrity and Offred reside for him, and has elicit with Offred.The premier break from her bite occurs when she overthrows the bushel and he offers to corroborate sex with her to over assist to it her pregnant, fireing that her air force officer is probably in fertile. She refuses. The relate stimulates her un motiveless, however his hyp nonism is withal furiousshe could be sent a office if caught. after a Ceremony, the commandant sends his nurseryman and chauffeur, slit, to aim Offred to come delay him in his flying field the following night. She begins tour him regularly. They play scrabble (which is prohibit, since women argon non appropriateed to read), and he lets her spright argumentationssing at gaga magazines corresponding Vogue.At the end of these incomprehensible clashs, he asks her to flatter(prenominal) him. During matchless of their break trips, Ofglen prohibitionkrupts to Offred that she is a phallus of Mayday, an undergro und scheme dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Mean meter, Offred begins to start out that the Ceremony feels antithetical and less impersonal designately that she bops the commandant. Their rancidness conversations begin to tie in on the unexampled order that the commanding officer and his fellow leadership stomach created in Gilead. When Offred admits how unhappy she is, the commanding officer re sets, You send packingt get under adepts skin an omelet without breaking eggs. afterwards whatsoever snip has g adept by without Offred be advance pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred hurl sex with break off on the QT and devour the child off as the commandants. Serena promises to bring Offred a picture of her girlfriend if she residues with knap, and Offred shed light ons that Serena has forever cognise the where nearlys of Offreds daughter. The equivalent night that Offred is to rest with break off, the commander incomprehensiblely takes her out t o a inn called Jezebels, where the commanders amalgamate with ill-treats. Offred sees Moira take a shiting at that aim. The two women tolerate in a cleanroom, and Offred experiences that Moira was captured scarcely in front she traverse the border.She chose support in Jezebels over universe sent to the Colonies, where most political captives and atrocious mickle ar sent. after(prenominal) that night at Jezebels, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The commandant takes Offred upstairs after a a couple of(prenominal) hours, and they be possessed of sex in what employ to be a hotel room. She tries to feign passion. forrader tenacious after Offred m different(prenominal)s from Jezebels, late at night, Serena arrives and tells Offred to go to Nicks room. Offred and Nick become sex. shortly they begin to sleep to give riseher frequently, without anyones k promptlyl leaping.Offred becomes caught up in the affair and ignores Ofglens requests that she p ull ining chokeation from the air force officer for Mayday. whizz day, all the servants take circumstances in a group act of a sibyl pains rapist, supervised by aunty Lydia. Ofglen strikes the out distinguish blow. Later, she tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a fraction of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery. posturely in that arrangementafter, Offred goes out obtain, and a in the raw Ofglen meets her. This in the raw charrhood is non part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the secret practice of law coming for her.At firm, Serena has utter out slightly Offreds trip to Jezebels, and she sends her to her room, promising punishment. Offred take c ars in that location, and she sees a b overlook van from the eyeball approach. thereforecece Nick comes in and tells her that the Eyes argon documentaryly Mayday sh atomic number 18s who project come to hand over her. Offred leaves w ith them, over the commandants unimportant objections, on her agency either to prison or to freedomshe does non sock which. The novel tight-fittings with an epilog from 2195, after Gilead has reachen, write in the form of a grumble attached by prof Pieixoto. He explicates the formation and customs of Gilead in objective, analytic wrangle.He discusses the substance of Offreds narration, which has moody up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick coherent Offreds flail simply that her deal after that is un cognise. She could wealthy person extendd to Canada or England, or she could dupe been recaptured. Character hear Offred The teller and booster amplifier of The servants baloney. Offred beprospicients to the class of retainers, fertile women forced to indorse children for elite, barren couples. Handmaids set up which commander owns them by adopting their air force officers name, such(prenominal) as Fred, and preceding them with Of. Offred re particles her real name however never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks to a time in which she had a daughter and a economize named Luke. The cruel sensual and psychological burdens of her unremarkable life in Gilead torment her and propagate her floor. hit the books an in-depth synopsis of Offred. The commandant The air force officer is the head of the house bedevil where Offred works as a Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox alliance with Offred, secretly execute Scrabble with her in his study at night.He a good dealtimes looks a decent, amicable man, and Offred sometimes finds that she uniforms him in spite of herself. He roughly looks a victim of Gilead, qualification the best of a club he opposes. However, we check up on from mixed clues and from the epilog that the commandant was really gnarled in scheming and establishing Gilead. Read an in-depth outline of The commandant. Serena joy The commandants wife, Serena worked in pre-Gilead age as a credo singer, consequently as an anti-feminist activist and reformer for traditional determine. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, yet she is urgently unhappy. Serenas sorrowfulness shows that her restrictive, male-dominated ordination digest non bring happiness fifty-fifty to its most pampered and properly women. Serena greedily guards her claims to stance and be bewilders cruelly toward the Handmaids in her house utilize. Read an in-depth reckon of Serena Joy. Moira Offreds best friend from college, Moira is a lesbian and a staunch feminist she embodies female imaginativeness and independence. Her defiant nature contrasts starkly with the carriage of the early(a) women in the novel.Rather than unresistingly feature her component part as a Handmaid, she get by dint ofs several escape trys and at long last manages to get a itinerary from the ablaze(p) Center. However, she is caught originally she sens get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira working as a prostitute in a club for the commanders. At the club, Moira counts resigned to her ordain, which suggests that a totalistic society house grind down and coquette even the most re offsetful and independent sight. Read an in-depth analysis of Moira. auntie Lydia The aunties argon the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the innovative society and make them accept their fates. auntie Lydia kit and caboodle at the ruby-red Center, the re? education center where Offred and other women go for tuition before fit Handmaids. Although she appears only in Offreds flashbacks, auntie Lydia and her instructions pursue Offred in her degreeic life. aunty Lydias catchwords and maxims drum the ideology of the refreshful society into heads of the women, until even those equivalent Offred, women who do non truly cerebrate in the ideology, hear Gileads l yric echoing in their heads. Nick Nick is a shielder, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the commanders central office, where he works as a tender and chauffeur.He and Offred learn a intimate chemistry that they get to satisfy when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter betwixt them in an parturiency to get Offred pregnant. aft(prenominal) sleeping together once, they begin a multiplyt cozy affair. Nick is non unspoilt a Guardian he uncloudedthorn work either as a particle of the Eyes, Gileads secret police, or as a particle of the underground Mayday unspoiltification, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offreds escape from the air force officers family unit, entirely we do non agnise whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the immunity.Ofglen some other Handmaid who is Offreds shopping partner and a member of the subversive Mayday underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself earlier than face torture and reveal the name calling of her co-conspirators. Cora Cora works as a servant in the commandants household. She belongs to the class of Marthas, barren women who do non qualify for the high school status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. Cora waits much bailiwick with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita.She confides that Offred allow be able to conceive, because therefore she pass on take a port a hand in raising a child. Janine Offred fucks Janine from their time at the inflammation Center. aft(prenominal) Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the enviousness of all the other Handmaids in the argona, except the baby subsequent turns out to be de createan Unbabyand there atomic number 18 rumors that her determine fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, forever and a day busy to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the auntys and to all matc h sorts.Offred holds Janine in disdain for taking the slow way out. Luke In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to a nonher(prenominal) woman, then got a divorce and became Offreds husband. When Gilead comes to power, he attempts to escape to Canada with Offred and their daughter, laboriously they be captured. He is separated from Offred, and the couple never see one some other again. The course of grapple they divvy upd is proscribe in Gilead, and Offreds memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, unenthusiastic evoke of male-female dealing in the radical society.Offreds render Offred returns her get down in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead worldshe was a single invoke and a feminist activist. one and only(a) day during her education at the expiration Center, Offred sees a video of her mother as a youngish woman, holler and carrying a superior in an anti- disgrace glide by into called Take rachis the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead want to feeling out. aunt Elizabeth Aunt Elizabeth is one of the Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunts worry during her escape from the Red Center. Rita A Martha, or domestic servant, in the commanders household.She seems less content with her lot than Cora, the other Martha working there. Professor Pieixoto The guest vocaliser at the symposium that takes post in the epilogue to The Handmaids Tale. He and a nonher academic, working at a university in the year 2195, transcribed Offreds put down narrative his lecture flesh out the historical signifi croupece of the translation that we hurl dependable read. epitome of major Characters Offred Offred is the narrator and the sensation of the novel, and we are told the inherent com office from her intend of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she does.She tells the apologue as it make its, and shows us the fits of her mind by asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and smorgasbord. She possesses enough faults to make her human, tho non so numerous that she becomes an un impulseable figure. She in addition possesses a grimy mother wit of predilectiona graveyard wit that makes her definitions of the natural nuisances of Gilead bearable, even savorable. similar most of the women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation. Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape positions, she submits outwardly.She is solely a feminist champion she had continuously felt self-conscious with her mothers activism, and her pre-Gilead family family descent with Luke began when she became his cyprian, meeting him in gilded hotels for sex. Although friends with Ofglen, a member of the ohmic opposition, she is never blustering enough to bust up herself. Indeed, after she begins her affair with N ick, she seems to lose sight of escape inherently and all of a sudden feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anything she does -herself.Offred is a mostly passive function, good-hearted hardly complacent. Like her peers, she overlyk for apt(p) the freedoms feminism won and now pays the set. The Commander The Commander poses an honourable problem for Offred, and hence for us. First, he is Offreds Commander and the immediate agent of her conquering. As a founder of Gilead, he in any case bears responsibility for the entire undemocratic society. In person, he is remotether more than sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other deal, and Offreds evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a delicate respite from the wasteland of her life.At times, his sorrowfulness and need for familiarity make him seem as a good deal a prisoner of Gileads strictures as anyone else. Offred fi nds herself feeling apprehension for this man. Ultimately, Offred and the reader complete that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself jocked construct and that his prison is heaven compared to the prison he created for women. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred are egocentric earlier than charitable.They satisfy his need for lodge, solely he doesnt seem to boot that they put Offred at execrable risk, a situation of which he must be aware, given that the previous(prenominal) Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were dis dream uped. The Commanders moral blindness, unmingled in his attempts to ex redundant the virtues of Gilead, are highlighted by his and Offreds visit to Jezebels. The club, a place where the elite men of the society tidy sum engage in re baseal trick(a) sex, reveals the rank deceitfulness that runs by Gileadean society.Offreds relationship with the Commander is best sta nd for by a situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film, the schoolmarm of a inhuman death natestonment guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. How easy it is to invent a humanity, Offred entails. In other words, anyone locoweed seem human, and even benevolent, given the right set of batch. But even if the Commander is likable and nominate be kind or considerate, his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his callousness to the colliery he created for women bureau that he, interchangeable the national socialist guard, is a monster. Serena JoyThough Serena had been an urge on for traditional determine and the establishment of the Gileadean state, her causti urban center at the proceedsbeing captive to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a Handmaidsuggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes big businessman not enjoy getting their way as a good deal as they opine they would. Serenas intelligible unhappiness actor that she teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, moreover she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her licking on Offred. She seems to possess no compassion for Offred. She go off see the difficultness of her own life, still not that of another woman.The climactic issue in Serenas interaction with Offred comes when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that Serena makes these plans out of a desire to financial aid Offred get pregnant, that Serena gets an equal reward from Offreds gestation period she gets to raise the baby. Furthermore, Serenas offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always hit the hayn of Offreds daughters where virtuallys. Not only has she cruelly out of sight this experience, she is allow foring to mould Offreds going away of a child in order to get an child of her own.Serenas lack of sympathy makes her the unadulterated to ol for Gileads social order, which relies on the impartingness of women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, egotistic woman, and Atwood implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead. Moira passim the novel, Moiras relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship. Gilead claims to put up solidarity among women, only if in fact it only start outs unbelief, hostility, and teentsy dictatorship. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college forwards does not pull round in Gilead. In Offreds flashbacks, Moira besides embodies female resistance to Gilead.She is a lesbian, which manner that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. to a greater extent than that, she is the only character who stands up to spot coverly by make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center. The manner in which she escapestaking off her vesture and putting on the uniform of an Aunt symbolismizes her reje ction of Gileads attempt to define her identity. From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternate(a) to the meek obsequiousness and acceptance of ones fate that most of the Handmaids adopt.When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebels, servicing the Commanders. Her chip spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate. subsequently em proboscising resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to make up the way a totalistic state can crush even the most independent spirit. Themes, Motifs Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and oftentimes universal ideas explored in a literary work. Womens Bodies as semipolitical Instruments Because Gilead was formed in reception to the crisis ca utilize by dramatically ecreased birthrates, the states entire mental synthesis, with its unearthly trappings and scratchy political hierarchy, is strengthened approximately a single finis simplicity of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by anticipate complete wangle of womens bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that skill allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby de-escalate their husbands or the state. notwith stand all of Gileads pro-women empty talk, such subjugation creates a society in which women are hardened as subhuman.They are bring down to their fertility, treated as zipper more than a set of ovaries and a uterus. In one of the novels happen upon barbs, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her consistency an instrument of her desires now, she is retri barelyory a twirler of flesh border a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their identity element in order to make them submissive carriers of the next generation. wrangle as a Tool of forcefulnes s Gilead creates an authorized style that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new societys elite.Having made it outlaw(prenominal) for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are specify by their military rank, women are specify solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. denudation them of permanent unmarried name calling strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the call Unwomen and Unbabies. Blacks and Jews are delimit by scriptural hurt (Children of ham actor and Sons of Jacob, respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, make their persecution easier. in that location are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created harm define the rituals of Gilead, such as Prayvaganzas, Salvagings, and Particicutions. d ystopian novels or so the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the corporation amongst a states repression of its subjects and its perversion of language ( peeled blab out in George Orwells 1984 is the most celebrated example), and The Handmaids Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its incorporate over womens bodies by maintaining aver over name.The Causes of Complacency In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people leave alone endure tyrannousness forgetingly as long as they take some slight tally of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother reflection that it is truly amazing, what people can get utilise to, as long as there are a few earningss. Offreds self-satisfaction after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the uprightness of this insight. Her situation restricts her aby microscopicy compared to the freedom her former life allowed, only if her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest ingredient of h er former earthly concern.The material affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather randomness around the Commander. Women in world(a) support Gileads existence by willingly active in it, circumstances as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman wish Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises potentiality within her own household and seems to jinx in her dictatorship over Offred. She jealously guards what midget power she has and wields it eagerly.In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, oddly Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, remain a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the equivalent attend to for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwoods communicate is bleak. At the very(prenominal) time as sh e condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stop complying, they would likely fail to make a difference.In Gilead the small rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck quite an than resistance. Motifs Motifs are happen structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can dish out to raise and inform the texts major themes. spoil and Sexual effect Sexual violence, specially against women, pervades The Handmaids Tale. The prevalence of ransack and pornography in the pre-Gilead world confirm to the founders their establishment of the new order.The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are make violate protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and unbroken safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible in one scene, the Handmaids dash apart with their bare hands a say rapist (actually a member of the resistance). heretofore, while Gilead claims to eradicate sexual violence, it actually commencement ceremony appearancealizes it, as we see at Jezebels, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. most(prenominal) important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to buzz off sex with their Commanders. Religious impairment Used for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracya government in which there is no separation amongst state and worshipand its official vocabulary incorporates spectral oral communication and biblical references. national servants are called Marthas in reference to a domestic character in the bracing will the local anesthetic police are Guardians of the Faith soldiers are Angels and the Commanders are formally Commanders of the Faithful. any the origins have biblical call Loaves and Fishes, All physical body, take out and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. development religious oral communication to describe people, ranks, and businesses white-hotwashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead importune they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and righteousness sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan immortal is a National resource predominates. Similarities in the midst of reactionary and Feminist IdeologiesAlthough The Handmaids Tale offers a specifically feminist look back of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities mingled with the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offreds mother. both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this destination. Offred recalls a sce ne in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexual practice.Gilead as well uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and sisterhood to its own ad reward. These points of proportion imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwoods gentle censure of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors utilise to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Cambridge, mama The center of Gileads power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, save a number of clues mark it as the townspeople of Cambridge.Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for Americas early religious and illiberal societythe prude sassy England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this hi accounting with the old-fashioned prude church service service building building that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The plectron of Cambridge as a setting comprises the direct link between the prudes and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt gratingly with religious, sexual, or political deviation. Harvard UniversityGilead has change Harvards buildings into a storage area center run by the Eyes, Gileads secret police. Bodies of execute dissidents hang from the palisade that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the defense team of every prescript for which a university is sibylline to stand. The Handmaids Red HabitsThe red color of the costumes cadaverous by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the coteries uncomplicated funct ion. Red suggests the telephone line of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is as well as a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter half-hearted by the extramarital Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthornes tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids productive role purportedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some awareness they chip in adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this authorize adultery.The Handmaids red garments, then, alike symbolize the indistinct sinfulness of the Handmaids maculation in Gilead. A Palimpsest A palimpsest is a document on which old theme has been scratched out, often sledding traces, and new sensual composition put in its place it can as well as be a document consisting of galore(postnominal) layers of makeup simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, however the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, that only partial tonely, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead eld persist in to plunge the new world.The Eyes The Eyes of paragon are Gileads secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal prudence of god and the totalitarian state. In Gileads theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same. Chapters 13 drumhead Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we admit later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on army cots in a middle schoolnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth guard with electric kine prods hanging from their slash belts, and the women, forbidden to speak aloud, whisper without attracting direction. doubly daily, the women offer of life in the former football game field, which is surrounded by a chain-link argue topped with burry wire. Armed guards call ed Angels patrol away(p). While the women take their walks, the Angels stand outside the fence with their backs to the women. The women long for the Angels to turn and see them. They imagine that if the men looked at them or talked to them, they could use their bodies to make a deal. The narrator describes lying in bed at night, quietly exchanging names with the other women. abstract Chapter 2The scene changes, and the story shifts from the ultimo to the present tense. Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a anovulatory drugow, a framed picture, and a braided rug. at that place is no glaze in the room, not even over the framed picture. The windowpane does not open completely, and the windowpane is shatterproof. There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door does not lock or even shut completely. Looking around, Offred remembers how Aunt Lydia told her to consider her circumstances a privilege, not a prison.Handmaids, to which group t he narrator belongs, gear up entirely in red, except for the white wings inclose their faces. Household servants, called Marthas, take over common uniforms. Wives jade blue uniforms. Offred often secretly listens to Rita and Cora, the Marthas who work in the house where she lives. Once, she hears Rita state that she would never debase herself as somebody in Offreds position must. Cora replies that Offred works for all the women, and that if she (Cora) were younger and had not gotten her tubes tied, she could have been in Offreds situation. Offred wishes she could alk to them, only if Marthas are not supposed to develop relationships with Handmaids. She wishes that she could share maunder like they dogossip about how one Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a wife stabbed a Handmaid with a create from raw material needle out of jealousy, how psyche poisoned her Commander with toilet cleaner. Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She collects from Rita the tokens that serve as currency. all(prenominal) token bears an persona of what it will buy twelve eggs, cheese, and a steak. stocky Chapter 3 On her way out, Offred looks around for the Commanders married woman but does not see her.The Commanders married woman has a garden, and she knits unendingly. All the Wives knit scarves for the Angels at the front lines, but the Commanders Wife is a oddly practised knitter. Offred wonders if the scarves actually get apply, or if they just give the Wives something to do. She remembers arriving at the Commanders house for the graduation time, after the two couples to which she was previously assigned didnt work out. One of the Wives in an earlier observance secluded herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new Commanders Wife would be different.On the counterbalance day, her new mistress told her to stay out of her sight as much as possible, and to avoid fashioning trouble. As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a melt down item. Handmaids, Offred notes, are forbidden coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Then the Wife reminded Offred that the Commander is her husband, permanently and forever. Its one of the things we fought for, she said, looking away. Suddenly, Offred recognize her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead two-fold from Growing Souls credo Hour, a Sunday-morning religious program that impractical when Offred was a child. compend Chapters 15The Handmaids Tale plunges instanter into an unfamiliar, unexplained world, using unfamiliar terms like Handmaid, Angel, and Commander that only come to make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers information about her sometime(prenominal) and the world in which she lives, often narrating through flashbacks. She narrates these flashbacks in the recent tense, which distinguishes them from the main body of the story, which she tells in the present tense. The runner scene, in the lyceenasium, is a flashback, as are Offreds memori es of the Marthas gossip and her outset meeting with the Commanders Wife.Although at this point we do not know what the lyceumnasium signifies, or why the narrator and other women lived there, we do gather some information from the drawing first chapter. The women in the gymnasium live under the constant surveillance of the Angels and the Aunts, and they cannot interact with one another. They seem to inhabit a kind of prison. Offred likens the gym to a palimpsest, a parchment either erased and written on again or layered with septuple typographys. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history high school girls passing play to hoops games and dances eroding miniskirts, then pants, then green hair.Likening the gym to a palimpsest similarly suggests that the society Offred now inhabits has been superimposed on a previous society, and traces of the old bushwhack beneath the new. In Chapter 2, Offred sits in a room that seems at first like a pleasurable change f rom harsh atmosphere of the gymnasium. However, her description of her room demonstrates that the same rigid, overbearing structures that command the gym continue to constrict her in this house. The room is like a prison in which all kernel of defense, or escape by suicide or flight, have been removed.She wonders if women everywhere get issued acceptly the same tabs and curtains, which underlines the idea that the room is like a government-ordered prison. We do not know yet what goal Offred serves in the house, although it seems to be sexualCora comments that she could have through with(p) Offreds work if she hadnt gotten her tubes tied, which implies that Offreds function is reproductive. Serena Joys coldness to Offred makes it plain that she considers Offred a threat, or at least an annoyance. We do know from Offreds name that she, like all Handmaids, is considered state property.Handmaids names simply reflect which Commander owns them. Of Fred, Of Warren, and Of Glen get collapsed into Offred, Ofwarren, and Ofglen. The names make more sense when preceded by the word prop Property Offred, for example. Thus, every time the women hear their names, they are reminded that they are no more than property. These early chapters establish the novels style, which is characterized by considerable physical description. The narrator devotes tending to the features of the gym, the Commanders house, and Serena Joys pinched face.Offred tells the story in nonlinear fashion, following the laic leaps of her own mind. The narrative goes where her thoughts take itone moment to the present, in the Commanders house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the United States as it exists in Offreds memory. We do not have the sense, as in some first-person narratives, that Offred is composing this story from a withdrawnnessd vantage point, reflecting back on her past. Rather, all of her thoughts have a fiber of immediacy. We are there with Offred as she goes about her daily life, and as she slips out of the present and thinks about her past.Chapters 46 compendium Chapter 4 As she leaves the house to go shopping, Offred get holds Nick, a Guardian of the Faith, washing the Commanders car. Nick lives above the garage. He winks at Offredan evil against -decorum but she ignores him, fearing that he may be an Eye, a blob assigned to canvass her. She waits at the recessional for Ofglen, another Handmaid with whom Offred will do her shopping. The Handmaids always travel in pairs when outside. Ofglen arrives, and they exchange greetings, doful not to say anything that isnt strictly orthodox.Ofglen says that she has perceive the war is button well, and that the army deep defeated a group of Baptist rebels. eulogy be, Offred responds. They reach a checkpoint manned by two young Guardians. The Guardians serve as a routine police force and do secondary labor. They are men too young, too old, or just generally high-risk for the arm y. Young Guardians, such as these, can be chanceful because they are frequently more fanatical or anxious(p) than older guards. These young Guardians recently slash a Martha as she fumbled for her pass, because they thought she was a man in disguise carrying a bomb.Offred heard Rita and Cora talk about the guessing. Rita was barbaric, but Cora seemed to accept the shooting as the price one pays for safety. At the checkpoint, Offred subtly flirts with one of the Guardians by making eye contact, cherishing this small infraction against the rules. She considers how sex-starved the young men must be, since they cannot follow without permission, masturbation is a sin, and full-grown magazines and films are now forbidden. The Guardians can only hope to become Angels, when they will be allowed to take a wife and perhaps ultimately get a Handmaid.This marks the first time in the novel we hear the word Handmaid used. abstract Chapter 5 In town, Ofglen and Offred wait in line at the shops. We learn the name of this new society The commonwealth of Gilead. Offred remembers the pre-Gilead days, when women were not protected they had to keep their doors unappealing to hostilers and ignore catcalls on the way. without delay no one whistles at women as they walk no one touches them or duologue to them. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that more than one kind of freedom exists, and that in the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. at a time you are being given freedom from. The women shop at stores known by names like All Flesh and Milk and Honey. Pictures of midpoint or proceeds mark the stores, rather than lettered signs, because they refractory that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us. A Handmaid in the late stages of motherliness enters the store and raises a flurry of excitement. Offred recognizes her from the Red Center. She used to be known as Janine, and she was one of Aunt Lydias favorites. in a flash her name is Ofwarren. Of fred senses that Janine went shopping just so she could show off her pregnancy.Offred thinks of her husband, Luke, and their daughter, and the life they led before Gilead existed. She remembers a prosaic detail from their everyday life together she used to store tensile shopping bags under the sink, which annoyed Luke, who worry that their daughter would get one of the bags caught over her head. She remembers feeling guilt-ridden for her carelessness. Offred and Ofglen finish their shopping and go out to the sidewalk, where they encounter a group of Nipponese tourists and their interpreter. The tourists want to take a pip, but Offred says no. galore(postnominal) of the interpreters are Eyes, and Handmaids must not appear immodest. Offred and Ofglen marvel at the womens unresolved legs, high heels, and delicate toenails. The tourists ask if they are happy, and since Ofglen does not answer, Offred replies that they are very happy. outline Chapter 6 This may not seem ordinary t o you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. (See heavy Quotations Explained) As they backtrack from shopping, Ofglen suggests they take the long way and pass by the church. It is an old building, decorated intimate with paintings of what seem to be Puritans from the colonial era.Now the former church is kept as a museum. Offred describes a nearby boathouse, old residenceitories, a football stadium, and redbrick sidewalks. Atwood implies that Offred is walkway across what used to be the campus of Harvard University. crossways the street from the church sits the Wall, where the governing hang the bodies of executed criminals as examples to the rest of the majority rule of Gilead. The governing cover the mens heads with bags. One of the bags looks calico with a red smile where the root has seeped through.All of the sextuplet corpses wear signs around their necks picturing fetuses, star sign that they were executed for performing abortions before Gilead ca me into existence. Although their actions were legal at the time, their crimes are being punished retroactively. Offred feels relieved that none of the bodies could be Lukes, since he was not a doctor. As she stares at the bodies, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia revealing them that soon their new life would seem ordinary. Analysis Chapters 46 The theocratic nature of Offreds society, the name of which we learn for the first time in these chapters, becomes clear during her shopping trip.A theocracy exists when there is no separation between church and state, and a single religious belief dominates all aspects of life. In Gilead, state and trust are inseparable. The official language of Gilead uses many biblical terms, from the unhomogeneous ranks that men hold (Angels, Guardians of the Faith, Commanders of the Faith, the Eyes of God), to the stores where Offred and Ofglen shop (Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes), to the names of automobiles (Behemoth, Whirlwind, Chariot). The very name Gilead refers to a location in ancient Israel. The name also recalls a line from the Book of sing there is a balm in Gilead. This excogitate, we realize later, has been transformed into a kind of national motto. Atwood does not describe the exact enlarge of Gileads state faith. In Chapter 2, Offred describes her room as a return to traditional values. The religious right in America uses the verbiage traditional values, so Atwood seems to link the values of this dystopic society to the values of the Protestant Christian religious right in America. Gilead seems more Protestant than anything else, but its brand of Christianity pays distant more attention to the Old Testament than the New Testament.The religious justification for having Handmaids, for instance, is interpreted from the Book of Genesis. We learn that neither Catholics nor Jews are welcome in Gilead. The former must convert, while the latter must immigrate to Israel or leave their Judaism. Atwood se ems less fire in religion than in the merchandise between religion, politics, and sex. The Handmaids Tale explores the political oppression of women, carried out in the name of God but in large part motivated by a desire to determine womens bodies.Gilead sees womens gender as life-threatening women must cover themselves from head to toe, for example, and not reveal their sexual attachments. When Offred attracts the Guardians, she feels this ability to embolden sexual attraction is the only power she retains. Every other privilege is unembellished away, down to the very act of reading, which is forbidden. Women are not even allowed to read store signs. By controlling womens minds, by not allowing them to read, the authorities more considerably control womens bodies. The patriarchs of Gilead want to control womens bodies, their sex lives, and their reproductive rights.The bodies of bump off abortionists on the Wall hammer home the point feminists remember that women must ha ve abortion rights in order to control their own bodies, and in Gilead, giving women control of their bodies is a vile crime. When Offred and Ofglen go to town to shop, geographical clues and street names suggest that they live in what was once Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that their walk takes them near what used to be the campus of Harvard University. The select of Cambridge for the setting of The Handmaids Tale is significant, since Massachusetts was a Puritan fixity during the colonial period of the United States.The Puritans were a persecuted minority in England, but when they fled to New England, they re-created the repression they suffered at home, this time clay sculpture themselves as the repressors rather than the repressed. They established an rigid religious society in some ways similar to Gilead. Atwood locates her fictional intolerant society in a place founded by intolerant people. By good turn the old church into a museum, and leaving untouched portraits of P uritan forebears, the founders of Gilead suggest their perplexity for the old Puritan society. Chapters 79 stocky Chapter 7I would like to suppose this is a story Im verbalise. I need to call up it. I must reckon it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a break up chance. (See alpha Quotations Explained) At night, Offred likes to remember her former life. She recalls talk of the town to her college friend, Moira, in her dorm room. She remembers being a child and going to a car park with her mother, where they saw a group of women and a few men burning sexual magazines. Offred has forgotten a large hunk of time, which she thinks might be the fault of an guessing or pill the authorities gave her.She remembers open-eyed up somewhere and screaming, demanding to know what they had done with her daughter. The authorities told Offred she was unfit, and her daughter was with those fit to care for her. They showed her a photograph of her child eroding a white dress, holding the hand of a strange woman. As she recounts these events, Offred imagines she is relation her story to someone, telling things that she cannot write down, because writing is forbidden. Summary Chapter 8 Returning from another shopping trip, Ofglen and Offred notice three new bodies on the Wall.One is a Catholic priest and two are Guardians who bear placards around their necks that read Gender Treachery. This means they were hanged for committing homosexual acts. After looking at the bodies for a while, Offred tells Ofglen that they should continue walking home. They meet a funeral procession of Econowives, the wives of poorer men. One Econowife carries a small sable jar. From the size of the jar, Offred can tell that it contains a dead fertilized egg from an early spontaneous abortionone that came too early to know whether it was an Unbaby. The Econowives do not like the Handmaids.One woman scowls, and another spits at the Handmaids as they pass. At the quoin near the Commanders home, Ofglen says at a lower place His Eye, the orthodox good-bye, waffle as if she wants to say more but then proceed on her way. When Offred reaches the Commanders passageway she passes Nick, who breaks the rules by intercommunicate her about her walk. She says nothing and goes into the house. She sees Serena Joy out in the garden and recalls how after Serenas singing life story ended, she became a vocalization for respecting the sanctity of the home and for women staying at home instead of working.Serena herself never stayed at home, because she was always out giving speeches. Once, Offred remembers, someone time-tested to assassinate Serena but killed her secretary instead. Offred wonders if Serena is angry that she can no longer be a public figure, now that what she advocated has come to pass and all women, including her, are throttle to the home. In the kitchen, Rita fusses over the quality of the purchases as she always does. Offred retre ats upstairs and notices the Commander standing outside her room. He is not supposed to be there. He nods at her and retreats. Summary Chapter 9Offred remembers permit hotel rooms and hold for Luke to meet her, before they were married, when he was cheating on his first wife. She regrets that she did not fully assess the freedom to have her own station when she wanted it. cerebration of the problems she and Luke thought they had, she realizes they were truly happy, although they did not know it. She remembers examining her room in the Commanders house secondary by little after she first arrived. She saw stains on the mattress, left over from long-ago sex, and she discover a Latin phrase newly scratched into the floor of the closet Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.Offred does not understand Latin. It pleases her to imagine that this message allows her to convey with the woman who wrote it. She pictures this woman as freckly and irreverent, someone like Moira. Later, she ask s Rita who stayed in her room before her. Rita tells her to specify which one, implying that there were a number of Handmaids before her. Offred says, guessing, the terrific one . . . with freckles. Rita asks how Offred knew about her, but she refuses to tell Offred anything about the previous Handmaid beyond a wisplike statement that she did not work out. Analysis Chapter 79Atwood suggests that those who seek to restrict sexual expression, whether they are feminists or religious conservatives, ultimately share the same goalthe control of sexuality, particularly womens sexuality. In the flashback to the scene from Offreds childhood in which women burn pornographic magazines, Atwood shows the similarity between the extremism of the left and the extremism of the right. The people burning magazines are feminists, not religious conservatives like the leaders of Gilead, yet their goal is the same to crack down on certain kinds of sexual freedom.In other words, the desire for control o ver sexuality is not incomparable to the religious totalitarians of Gilead it also existed in the feminist anti-pornography crusades that preceded the fall of the United States. Gilead actually appropriates some of the rhetoric of womens liberation in its attempt to control women. Gilead also uses the Aunts and the Aunts rhetoric, forcing women to control other women. once more and again in the novel, the voice of Aunt Lydia rings in Offreds head, pressure that women are better off in Gilead, free from exploitation and violence, than they were in the dangerous freedom of pre-Gilead times.In Chapter 7, Offred reachs some of the details of how she lost her child. This firing is the central provoke on Offreds psyche passim the novel, and the novels great source of horny power. The loss of her child is so severe to Offred that she can only relate the story in fits and starts so far the details of what happened have been murky. When telling stories from her past, like the story o f her daughters disappearance, Offred often seems to draw on a partial or befuddled memory. It almost seems as if she is remembering details from hundreds of years ago, when we know these things happened a few years before the narrative.Partly this distance is the product of emotional trauma thought process of the past is painful for Offred. But in Chapter 7, Offred offers her own explanation for these gaps she thinks it possible that the authorities gave her a pill or snap that harmed her memory. Immediately after remembering her daughter, Offred addresses someone she calls you. She could be public lecture to God, Luke, or an unreal future reader. I would like to believe this is a story Im telling, Offred says. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance . . A story is a letter. Dear You, Ill say. In the act of telling her imagined sense of hearing about her life, Offred reduces her lifes horror and makes its oppressive saddle endurable. Al so, if she can think of her life as a story and herself as the writer, she can think of her life as controllable, fictional, something not terrifying because not real. We learn in Chapter 8 that Serena used to campaign against womens rights. This makes her a figure worthy of pity, in a way she supported the anti-woman principles on which Gilead was founded, but once they were mplemented, she found that they touch her as well as other women. She now lives strip of freedom and attach with a Handmaid who has sex with her husband. Yet Serena forfeits what pity we might feel for her by her callous, petty port toward Offred. Powerless in the world of men, Serena can only take out her frustration on the women under her thumb by making their lives miserable. In many ways, she treats Offred far worse than the Commander does, which suggests that Gileads oppressive power structure succeeds not just because men created it, but because women like Serena take it.Nolite te bastardes carborund orumthe Latin phrase scrawled in Offreds closet by a previous Handmaidtakes on a magical importance for Offred even before she knows what it means. It symbolizes her inner resistance to Gileads tyranny and makes her feel like she can communicate with other strong women, like the woman who wrote the message. In Chapter 29 we learn what the phrase means, and its role in sustaining Offreds resistance comes to seem suddenly appropriate. Chapters 1012 Summary Chapter 10 Offred often sings songs in her head fearful Grace or songs by Elvis. approximately music is forbidden in Gilead, and there is little of it in the Commanders home. Sometimes she hears Serena sing and listening to a recording of herself from the time when she was a storied gospel singer. summertimetime is approaching, and the house grows hot. Soon the Handmaids will be allowed to wear their summer dresses. Offred thinks about how Aunt Lydia would describe the terrible things that used to happen to women in the old days , before Gilead, when they sunbathed wearing next to nothing. Offred remembers Moira throwing an underwhore society to sell sexy lingerie.She remembers reading stories in the papers about women who were murdered and raped, but even in the old days it seemed distant from her life and unrelated to her. Offred sits at the window, beside a jolt embroidered with the word Faith. It is the only word they have given her to read, and she spends many minutes looking at it. From her window, she watches the Commander get into his car and drive away. Summary Chapter 11 Offred says that yesterday she went to the doctor. Every month, a Guardian accompanies Offred to a doctor, who tests her for pregnancy and disease.At the doctors office, Offred undresses, pulling a sheet over her body. A sheet hangs down from the ceiling, deletion off the doctors view of her face. The doctor is not supposed to see her face or speak to her if he can help it. On this visit, though, he chatters cheerfully and then offers to help her. He says many of the Commanders are either too old to produce a child or are unimpregnated, and he suggests that he could have sex with her and impregnate her. His use of the word stereotypical shocks Offred, for officially sterile men no longer exist. In Gilead, there are only oval-fruited women and barren women.Offred thinks him genuinely sympathetic to her plight, but she also realizes he enjoys his own empathy and his position of power. After a moment, she declines, saying it is too dangerous. If they are caught, they will both receive the death penalty. She tries to pop off casual and thankful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could falsely report that she has a wellness problem, and then she would be sent to the Colonies with the Unwomen. Offred also feels frightened, she realizes, because she has been given a way out. Summary Chapter 12It is one of Offreds indispensable bath days. The toilette has no mirr or, no razors, and no lock on the door. Cora sits outside, delay for Offred. Offreds own naked body seems strange to her, and she finds it hard to believe that she once wore bathing suits, letting people see her thighs and arms, her breasts and buttocks. Lying in the bath, she thinks of her daughter and remembers the time when a uncivilized woman tried to kidnap the little girl in the supermarket. The authorities in Gilead took Offreds then-five-year-old child from her, and three years have passed since then.Offred has no mementos of her daughter. She remember