The Handmaid's Tale: Key Facts | SparkNotes 2024/04/25, 17:40

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The Handmaid's Tale Study Guide

Margaret Atwood

Summary Characters Literary Devices Questions & Answers Quotes Quick Quizzes Essays Further Study

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The Handmaid's Tale: Key Facts | SparkNotes 2024/04/25, 17:40

Key Facts

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Full Title
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Handmaid's Tale

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Author
Margaret Atwood

Popular pages: The Handmaid's Tale

Type Of Work
Full Book Analysis
Novel
SUMMARY

Character List
Genre CHARACTERS

Anti-utopian (or “dystopian”) novel; science fiction; feminist political novel

O!red
CHARACTERS

Language Themes
English LITERARY DEVICES

Role of Women
QUOTES
Time And Place Written
Early 1980s, West Berlin and Alabama
Full Book
QUICK QUIZZES

Date Of First Publication

1986
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Publisher Every Literary Reference Found in

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McClelland & Stewart in Canada, Houghton Mi!in in the United States

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Narrator
O"red, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead QUIZ: Which Greek God Are You?

Point Of View
The Handmaid’s Tale is told from O"red’s point of view. She tells the story in the QUIZ: Which Bennet Sister Are You?
immediate present tense but frequently shifts to past tense for flashbacks to life
before Gilead and to her time in the Red Center. Much of her narration is concerned

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The Handmaid's Tale: Key Facts | SparkNotes 2024/04/25, 17:40

not with events or action, but with her emotional state, which is often a"ected by the
memories that well up from her happier past.

Tone
The novel’s tone is dark, and at times elegiac for the lost world before Gilead.
Consistently unhappy, O"red finds both refuge and pain in her memories. A sense of
fear and paranoia also pervades the novel, since all the characters live under a
ruthless, totalitarian government.

Tense
O"red describes her life in the Commander’s home in the present tense but
frequently shifts to the past tense to describe flashbacks and memories.

Setting (Time)
The not-too-distant future

Setting (Place)
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Protagonist
O"red

Major Conflict
The Republic of Gilead has subjugated women and reduced Handmaids like O"red
to sexual slavery. O"red desires happiness and freedom, and finds herself struggling
against the totalitarian restrictions of her society.

Rising Action
O"red’s evenings with the Commander; her shopping trips with Ofglen; her visit to
Jezebel’s

Climax
After learning that Ofglen committed suicide to avoid arrest, O"red returns home
and Serena confronts her about her trip to Jezebel’s.

Falling Action
O"red’s arrest or escape at the end of the novel

Themes
Women’s bodies as political instruments; language as a tool of power; the causes of
complacency

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The Handmaid's Tale: Key Facts | SparkNotes 2024/04/25, 17:40

Motifs
Rape and sexual violence; religious terms used for political purposes; similarities
between reactionary and feminist ideologies

Symbols
Cambridge, Massachusetts; Harvard University; the Handmaids’ red habits; a
palimpsest; the Eyes

Foreshadowing
O"red’s kiss with Nick foreshadows their eventual a"air; the attempted kidnapping of
O"red’s daughter foreshadows O"red’s eventual loss of her child; Ofglen’s arrest
foreshadows O"red’s own arrest.

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