a) How far, and in what ways, would you agree that Offred is presented as a trustworthy

narrator? (March 2021)

Intro:

o First person narration-> idea of memory-> Unreliable

o More into the book than if its reliable or not
o Idea of History-> Historical notes-> Undermine Offred narration

Main:

1) Fragmented Narratives: Aspects of Offred’s narration repeatedly disrupt and undermine any
sense of uncertainty that what she is describing is what actually happened within the story
world. Her mind jumps between vividly realised present details and flashbacks. Offred draws our
attention to the fact that her telling is a reconstruction after events have happened, and that she
is not always a trustworthy narrator.

o “This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now in my

head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearing what I should or shouldn’t have done,
how I should have played it.” (p. 134)
o Reliability of Peixoto: narrow-minded attitude, demeans Offred’s struggle- “ Thus it
was up to the Professor Wade and myself to arrange ethe blocks of speech in the
order which they appeared to go; but, as I have said elsewhere, all such
arrangements are based on some guesswork and are to be regarded as
approximate…” (p.302, Historical Notes)
- Reliable: Aspects of unfragmented narration can be seen as reflective of the difficulties
in attempting to reconstruct and convey a traumatic experience, and feel that they
therefore add to the stories realism.

2) Narrative hypotheses/ Hypothetical narration: a supposition of proposed explanation made on

the basics of limited evidence as a starting point towards further investigation.
Examples are:
 What happens to Luke
 Moira escape from Red centre (Ch 22) & her place in Jezebel (Ch 38)
Two of these instances are complicated by the implication that they are partly factual within the world of
the story, but readers cannot tell to what degree they are factual and to what degree they are hypotheses.
Offred's narration of Moira's escape from the Centre (in chapter 22) and of Moira's path to the place
nicknamed Jezebel's (in chapter 38) are both presented as acts of 'telling' a 'story', and as acts which require
Offred's own embellishment through hypothesis: Offred is explicit about her need to 'fill in' parts of the
story of Moira's escape, and is similarly open about how she fleshes out Moira's 'outlines' of her journey to
Jezebel's.

 End of Ch 38 what ultimately happened to Moira

The third instance is at the very end of chapter 38, at which point Offred also offers hypotheses about what
ultimately happened to Moira. These final hypotheses are presented as stories Offred would like to tell, and
which are, like the versions of what happened to Luke, entirely imagined by Offred.
Reader. Narrative
3) Narrative paradoxes/ multilinear narration: This kind of narration can have the effect of
challenging conventions of and conventional expectations about storytelling and linearity and is
just one example of the ways in which Offred's narrative style is arguably radical.
Examples:
o Chapter 15 when talking about Commander, and talk about what must feel like to be
a man, sentences seem paradoxes: she gives opinion of what it must be like “to be a
man, like that”, which she states that it “must be hell” , it “must be fine”, and it
“must be very silent”.
o Ch 18, presents one after another, three different version of where Luke might be
and what might have happened to him, and no two versions of it can be true. Offred
overtly asserts that she believes each of the versions to be true at once, explaining
that believing in contradictions is now the only way she can believe anything.
o Closing line of Offred’s narration
- Reliable: Although Offred often speculates about what could have happened, she but then
corrects herself
o “I made that up; It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.” (p.261)
o “It didn’t happen that way wither. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly”
(p.275) – This is when she is telling us about her first sexual encounter with Nick in
Chapter 40, she teases us by giving us several versions which at the end she gives us
the truth.

4) First person narration: usually comes with a narrator being unrealizable, as it is filtered and
shaped by emotions, values & experiences. Her account is fallible as it is told from her
perspective. Moreover, she is a homodiegetic narrator meaning she is narrating events have
happened to her- everything is told from her perspective. Flashbacks with no quotes show that her
memories are inexact-> It is a first-person narrative and she makes that clear from the start that
this is what she remembers.

o If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.
- “Even men used to say, I’d like to get laid. Though sometimes they said, I’d like to lay her.
All this is pure speculation. I don’t really know what men used to say.” (p. 37)
- “Our author, then, was one of many, and must be seen within the broad outlines of the
moment in history of which she was a part.” (Historical Notes)
- “Supposing then, the tapes to be genuine, what of the nature of the account itself?
Obviously, it could not have been recorded during the period of time it recounts, since, if
the author is telling the truth, no machine or tapes would have been available to her.”
(historical Notes)
- However, by the fact that she intentionally withholds information like her name it again
adds to that sense of being unreliable.
o “The other names in the document are equally useless for the purpose of
identification and authentication… There is a high probability that these were, in
any case, pseudonyms adopted to protect these individuals should the tapes be
discovered” (Historical Notes)
- AO5, Reliable: Although Offred herself tells the reader she is herself is not exactly sure of
what happened she is mostly presented as a trustworthy narrator. Undeniably, memory,
like language is not entirely reliable when it comes to reconstructing reality, nevertheless
her recounting of events does seem to have truth in them. she is retelling her story.
 Perhaps more important than factual evidence is the emotions behind the story like this
that historians fail to sometimes see.
o “I am coming up to a part you will not like at all, because in it I did not behave well
but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out. After all you’ve been through you
deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but involves the truth.” (p.268)
o She’s very detailed when describing things which gives the affect that she’s
remembering them correctly.

hat we actually have in Offred, though it takes us some time to realize, is a narrator
who is “reconstructing” the events from memory; this is the first hindrance to her
reliability. The Historical Notes disclose that the whole narrative is a
“reconstruction”, reminding us that the faulty status of Offred’s memory –
something that she does sometimes highlight throughout the narrative, even if not
prominently – must be taken under consideration as well.

Conclusion:

Within Offred narrative Atwood draws attention to “storytelling process, commenting on the ways
this telling shapes and changes real experience…and reminding reader that she may not always be a
reliable narrator”.

“On a first reading, the reader accepts the narrative convention that allows the teller of the story,
eventually known as Offred, to convey her tale even though she explicitly states that she lacks the
means of recording it.”

Quotes:

5) “Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing in any case forbidden.”
(p.49)

AO5:

 Atwood, Margaret 2: I would not put anything into it that human societies have not done
already
 Heidi Macpherson (Offred as unheroic): Offred “is not heroic. She is, instead, a passive
everywoman, awaiting rescue”
 “You’re dealing with a character whose ability to move in the society was limited. She was boxed
in… the more limited and boxed in you are, the more important details become”
 This late disclosure of information (taking place in the last fifteen pages of the novel) is a case of
what Meir Sternberg and Tamar Yacobi (2015, p. 419) call “the dynamics of (un)reliability” in
their comprehensive study of narrative unreliability and the mechanisms readers employ in
order to make sense of narrative inconsistencies.
 Gragoatá, Niterói, “It didn’t Happen that Way”: The Role of Narrative Inconsistencies... On the
contrary, we suggest that when we, as readers, finally perceive her efforts to engage her listener
through the use of narrative suspense, it should further our empathy towards the Handmaid,
and this is substantiated by the way Atwood organizes the narrative and by the juxtaposition of
Offred’s storytelling and Professor Pieixoto’s discourse in the twenty-second century.

General:

Offred is a reliable narrator:

 She is telling things as they happen in the present
 She’s very detailed when describing things which gives the affect that she’s remembering them
correctly.

Offred is unreliable:
 She jumps back and forth from past to present and there can be confusion
 She’s very opinionated
 Likes to assume what people are thinking about her
 Sometimes changes her story
 She also can’t remember a large portion of her life