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A Level English Literature revision The Handmaid's Tale - essay questions
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Essay questions on The Handmaid's Tale - A LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE
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ENGLISH LITERATUREA LEVEL -THE HANDMAID’S TALE
The Handmaid’s Tale belongs like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to the genre of dystopian
(sometimes referred to as anti-utopian) fiction. It is Margaret Atwood’s presentation of ‘What if?’ in the
most powerful democracy of the world. Margaret Atwood describes this work in an unpublished essay
entitled “The Handmaid’s Tale Before and After” as follows:
“It’s set in the near future, in a United States which is in the hands of a power-hungry elite who have
used their own brand of ‘Bible-based’ religion as an excuse for the suppression of the majority of the
population. It’s about what happens at the intersection of several trends, all of which are with us today:
the rise of right-wing fundamentalism as a political force, the decline of the Caucasian birth rate in North
America and northern Europe, the rise in infertility and birth-defect rates, due, some say, to increased
chemical pollutant and radiation levels, as well as to sexually transmitted diseases,”
(This material is in the Atwood manuscripts held in the Fisher Rare Book Room at the University of
Toronto)
This is the story of a nightmare America at the end of the 20 th Century when democratic institutions have
been violently overthrown and replaced by the new republic of Gilead. This fictional world is
simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. The narrator’s intention in portraying the world with such a
combination of familiar and unfamiliar elements is to enable us to recognise the world she is presenting
on one level whilst being conscious that many things are amiss. It is not therefore unimaginable. In this
respect it is a cautionary tale – the dangerous elements co-exist with the elements which constitute our
familiar reality (albeit that the familiar elements are gradually distorted and often eradicate our
‘normality’)
Major Themes:
Dystopia
, Feminism
Politics
Religion
Environmental Issues
The fundamentalist republic of ‘Gilead’ is named after a place in the Old Testament, a fertile,
mountainous region east of the Jordan. In Hebrew the name means ‘heap of stones’ (although the
region also abounded in spices and aromatic herbs). Gilead is closely associated with the history of the
patriarch Jacob and the prophet Jeremiah was a Gileadite. As a frontier land and a citadel ‘Gilead’
projects the ideal image for an embattled state, run on fundamentalist religious and patriarchal
principles. Refer to the Bible: Genesis 31:21, 37:25)
Paraphrase of Genesis 73:25 As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of
Ishmalites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on
their way to take them down to Egypt.
EXTRACT FROM AN EXAMINERS REPORT
Most students understood, at least broadly, the significance of Ofglen offering hope and resistance to
Offred. Most were able to identify at least one other episode in which they met, some giving a very
thorough overview of their interactions across the novel. Occasionally, students became side-tracked
into looking at how Offred interacts with other women such as Serena Joy and drifted off the focus of
the question. Surprisingly, very few students drew on spoken language terminology or conversation
analysis, which was a missed opportunity as it was a worthwhile area to explore for those who did.
Some stronger responses made good use of spoken discourse analysis when discussing the two
handmaids’ conversations and how these developed during the course of the novel. A number of
students said very little about the dialogue in the extract and commented on other aspects such as the
simile, ‘like a trained pig’. This did occasionally lead to some interesting discussion on the animal
imagery used throughout the novel and the dehumanisation of women, although not all students were
able to maintain a relevant focus on the question.
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