Handmaid's Tale - Parts XI - XV

I have just finished reading this novel by Margaret Atwood. It was a very interesting book, I would have to say. It was very difficult to figure out what time period she was writing it in and what period it was supposed to be taking place in, because there was some moments that seemed to be happening in our time. Such as the time where Offred has a flashback to a memory from when she was a child and remembered seeing Eva Braun on TV and not knowing who she was, while I was reading this part I right away could tell who she was picturing. This novel was actually written in the mid 1980's, and is supposed to be taking place in the near future, so around the 1990's - 2000's.

While reading this book I could relate many of the events and laws to now-a-days events and laws. For one would have to be that the Commander states that fact that everyone used to read books and magazines such as Vogue, which is a magazine that we still have. Also they used to talk about having abortions and going to strip club type things which is very common in todays time. All of the common jobs are no longer jobs because females are not allowed to have jobs except for being the carrier of The Commander's child. The women's clothing are falling to pieces because there are no more seamstresses to make new ones or even to just fix up their old costumes. There are many connections you can make to the past.

I would have to say this is a very interesting book. I liked how I could picture a lot of the happenings because a lot of it was connected to the American history. I would have to say it was a good read and showed a large amount of feminism throughout the whole novel.

Handmaid's Tale - Parts VI - X

I have just finished reading parts VI-X of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tail" and in this section I found many more ways that the women are ranked unequally with the males. In this part of the book is when Offred begins to have secret meetings with her Commander, which is against the rules because there is supposed to be a Guardian with her when ever she is with the Commander. This part of the book is when she begins to start to rebel against the rules. She breaks the rules by going down the the commander's room and plays scrabble with him. One of the large rules she is breaking is that she is seeing all of the books on display and is using large words. The Commander also gives her books and magazines to read on her free time, but she does not accept them because she would have no place to put them without them being found. The Commander also asks her something that they are never supposed to ask. He asks her to kiss him when she leaves from their first meeting.

Another main event that occurs in these few chapters is the ceremony of the birth of Ofwarrens child. It is a large ceremony because every single handmaid is supposed to be there to watch the excitement of the occasion. The commanders never go to these ceremonies and just sit upstairs in their rooms waiting to receive the good news. There is relief when Ofwarren gives birth to a lovely baby girl who they call a "keeper". There is a lot of fear that the baby will be unborn or a unhuman. If it is unborn that means that the baby is no longer living when it is received, while an unhuman baby is when the baby is either missing a toe or has some sort of deformity. If there is one of these things wrong then the Handmaid will be pronounced an unwomen and will have to leave immediately.

In these parts I have found many connections to the history of the world. The first main one that I found was from one of Offred's flash backs to when she was a child about the age of 6. It was the time of Hitler, in her flashback she remembers watching TV and on it was a female who turns out to of been Hitler's Wife. Margaret Atwood connects Hitler to the people of Gilead and how they don't accept a certain type of people. Hitler didn't accept Jews and kept them in camps where they would not be fed and would sooner or later die. While on the Gilead's sides they don't accept any babies that are slightly different in ways such as webbed feet, cleft pallet, missing toes, or any other type of deformation that could occur on a unborn child.

Something else I spotted was how their town is actually just the town that used to be Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they are on the campus of Harvard University. The gymnasium floor that she had a flashback too was the gym of the university. Also the soccer and football fields they had to march around where what used to be the university's football field. The Handmaid's are not allowed to leave the town which is actually just the old campus of the university. These are all connections that I spotted while reading this third of the book.

Handmaid's Tale - Parts I - V

Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is the first novel that I am studying for the topic of Women in literature. This novel is filled with female characters and is also written by Margaret Atwood who is a Female Canadian author. So far in this novel I have found that there are a lot of symbolic references to the Bible. First off, this book uses names such as Angels, Guardians of the faith, Commanders of the faith, and the Eyes of God, for all of the male positions in the town. There are also many references to the bible throughout the first third of the book (parts I-V). Such as when the commander reads bed time stories to the main character Offred, he always reads stories out of the bible. There is also feminism in this novel because of the womens names, for example they are all called either Offred, Ofglen, or Ofwarren which is just saying who they belong to (of Glen). The females in this book belong to their Commander for his sexual pleasure and are thought as though that is their only true purpose in life, to bare the Commander's children. If a pregnancy fails it is always the handmaids fault and never the males because in this community a male is never sterile but it is the women's fault instead. They are also never allowed to walk around town alone, they have to be in pairs at all times. The females have strict rules on how they have to present themselves. They are not allowed to show their hair, reveal any bit of their sexual attraction, they aren't even allowed to read store signs, and they are never to look an Angel or Guardian in the eyes.

"The Handmaid's Tale" main character Offred is a handmaid in the republic of Gilead. (A handmaid is a female servant, who once a month has sexual intercourse with their Commander hoping to get pregnant.) Offred has many flashbacks of her teenage years, in this book they get triggered by events in the present time of the novel. The first one shows us that when she was a teenager she lived in something that was a lot like a prison where they had to walk around the soccer fields all day and slept on a gymnasium floor. This is when she first meets her Commander's wife, Serina Joy. There is also a flash back where it brings her back to when she was just a teenager and her daughter was taken from her in the super market. This is where most of her pain and suffering comes from but when ever she tries to explain the incident she explains it as though it is very foggy in her memory.

So far in this book there is a lot of feminist perspectives on how the republic of Gilead is run and also all of the relations to the Bible that Margaret Atwood interprets into this book.