“It can’t happen here” could not be depended on: Anything could happen anywhere, given the circumstances.īy 1984, I’d been avoiding my novel for a year or two. Change could also be as fast as lightning. Having been born in 1939 and come to consciousness during World War II, I knew that established orders could vanish overnight. but then they disappeared.” I heard such stories many times. During my visits to several countries behind the Iron Curtain - Czechoslovakia, East Germany - I experienced the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject, the oblique ways in which people might convey information, and these had an influence on what I was writing. Every Sunday the East German Air Force made sonic booms to remind us of how close they were. The keyboard was German because I was living in West Berlin, which was still encircled by the Berlin Wall: The Soviet empire was still strongly in place, and was not to crumble for another five years. Why might Atwood have wanted you to make that connection?ġ0.In the spring of 1984 I began to write a novel that was not initially called “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I wrote in longhand, mostly on yellow legal notepads, then transcribed my almost illegible scrawlings using a huge German-keyboard manual typewriter I’d rented. Atwood's title brings to mind titles from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Babies are referred to as 'a keeper, 'unbabies, ' 'shredders.' What other real or fictional worlds do these terms suggest?ĩ. Why is the Bible under lock and key in Gilead?Ĩ. How do characters find ways to follow their natural instincts?ħ. The Commander in the novel says you can't cheat nature. How does the new republic of Gilead's social order often resemble a palimpsest?Ħ. A palimpsest is a medieval parchment that scribes attempted to scrape clean and use again, though they were unable to obliterate all traces of the original. Atwood cleverly weaves this sub-plot into a major focus with remarks by Offred such as 'Context is all, ' and 'I've filled it out for her,' 'I made that up,' and 'I wish this story were different.' Does Offred's habit of talking about the process of storytelling make it easier or more difficult for you to suspend disbelief?ĥ. At one level, The Handmaid's Tale is about the writing process.

What do each of their characters connote? What do the style and color of their clothes symbolize?Ĥ. Aunt Lydia, Janine, and Offred's mother also represent more than themselves.

Trace Moira's role throughout the tale to determine what she symbolizes.ģ. Offred says she was like an elevator with open sides who made them dizzy she was their fantasy. In Gilead, women are categorized as wives, handmaids, Marthas, or Aunts, but Moira refuses to fit into a niche.

The handmaid's tale books in order