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Summary Analysis The Handmaid's Tale
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This is not a summary but an Analysis of five themes that occur in The Handmaid' s Tale. ● Religion ● Gender ● Rebellion ● Power ● Freedom & Confinement
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Chapter 1-2-3- The wall
- aunts
- Econowives
- The eye
- Unwives
- Unmarriage
- Money
- Shop Signs
- Lipreading
- Guardians of the faith
- Clothes of the tourists
- Angels
- “Blessed be the fruit, may the lord open.”
Chapter 7-8-9-10-11
- Process into this system
- Soul scrolls
- The vogue (vanity magazines)
- Birthmobile
- Birthceremonies
- Unbabies
- The birth itself
- Transitional generation
- Freedom to/from
- Playing scrabble
- Meaning of the secret dates
- What happens to the ex-handmaids? → Jezebel's & colonies
- Latin in the wall
Themes
● Religion
● Gender
● Rebellion
● Power
● Freedom & Confinement
, Religion:
Gilead is an absurd world with unrealistic rules and ideas. All these rules have
been created by the creators of Gilead. The ceremony is based on the biblical
precedent of Rachel and Leah, where fertile servants can carry on
relationships to allow infertile women like the Commander’s Wife to have
families. Each month before the Ceremony, the Commander reads from
Genesis the same lines that make the book’s epigraph, justifying and
moralizing the crude intercourse that will take place. He reads from the bible
to justify what is going on in Gilead. But the texts in the bible are often twisted,
or the aunts and commanders only take out certain parts. Offred knows that a
lot that is quoted from the bible is not true, but she is not able to check and
prove it. Because the ordinary people and women in Gilead are not allowed to
read. This is proven by the fact that there is a lock on the cabinet where the
commander keeps his bible, and he is the only one who can open it. In the
book the aunts or the handmaids quote the bible. They keep repeating small
sentences, but only use the parts that justify the things that are happening in
Gilead.
Another example of the wrong use of religion in Gilead is the fact that the
commander is a member of the Regime that banned prostitution, extra-marital
sex, women’s magazines, and women’s literacy. Yet he invites Offred to play
Scrabble, gives her women’s magazines, kisses her and offers to and then
takes her to a brothel called Jezebel’s frequented by the elite to have sex with
her behind his wife’s back. This shows us that the commanders themselves
are not firm believers in this religion. They are just trying to manipulate people
to gain power.
Gender:
In Gilead all the rights of women have been taken away. They are not allowed
to read, to work or even go out on their own. Women are also made to believe
that everything can be blamed on them and that men can not do anything
wrong. A good example of this are the ‘confessions’. In the book the girls in
the red centre need to make confessions on things that happened to them.
Janine did an abortion, because she was raped when she was fourteen.
When she tells the other girls this happened they have to scream at her
saying “It is her fault”. The fact that she is blamed for being raped tells us a lot
about the position of women in Gilead. The women are blamed for things the
men did wrong. The reason why they keep telling Janine that she was the
reason the rape happened is to make the women believe in men being sacred
and women being the ones that do everything wrong. They are made to
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