The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Author Bio:
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her thirty years of writing, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and several honorary degrees. She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996). Her newest novel, The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize, was published in the fall of 2000. Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), published by Cambridge University Press in March 2002, is her latest book and her next novel, Oryx and Crake, will be published in April 2003. She has an uncanny knack for writing books that anticipate the popular preoccupations of her public.
Acclaimed for her talent for portraying both personal and worldly problems of universal concern, Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than thirty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.
Synopsis:
The Handmaid’s Tale is the chilling narrative of Offred, a woman in a misogynistic, post-apoclypitic American society that bases itself off of Christianity. As a handmaid, Offred must have ritualitistic sexual intercourse with her owner, the Commander, while his chaste Wife, Serena Joy, watches. If Offred becomes pregnant, she must surrender her child to the Commander and Serena Joy. Eventually, Offred meets Nick, the Commander’s chauffer and the two attempt to escape the opressive society in which they live.
Plot Questions:
1.) For what purpose was Gilead primarily founded?
2.) Who is Moira and how does she know Offred?
3.) What is the main purpose of the Handmaids and what do their red unifroms symbolize?
4.) What is the relationship between Serena Joy and the Commander?
5.) How does the relationship between the Commander and Offred develop?
Other Questions:
1.) What other works does The Handmaid’s Tale bear resemblence to? Why?
2.) Compare Offred to other opressed women in literature, either fictional, like Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or real, like Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
3.) Does Atwood present Gilead in an objective way? Or does she sympathize with one person or side over another?
4. Does The Handmaid’s Tale relate to feminism’s struggle in the 20th and 21st centuries?
5.) What tone does Atwood use in The Handmaid’s Tale? How does this tone add or take away from the novel?
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