Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale"
Uploaded by theoakland on Mar 16, 2004
An examination of pun and word play as a narrative technique in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Atwood uses word play in this dystopian novel to reinforce themes and ideas and to create the implication of and foreshadow ideas without direct allusion to them. Atwood’s character Offred also uses word play to both remember her past and as a conscious resistance to her present.
The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, formerly the USA. The country is both at war and undergoing Ethnic Cleansing. Due to pollution and other factors the birth rate has declined below the line of zero replacement. Puritanical and Biblical influences on Gilead are evident throughout with women’s roles based upon Biblical precedents. Such as the Handmaid’s which mirror Genesis’s Rachael and Leah. All unmarried women with ‘viable ovaries’ are held in bondage to a ‘Commander’ for the sole purpose of procreation.
Atwood alludes to the purpose of the Handmaids early in the book: “Waste not want not. I am not being wasted, why do I want?” I am not being wasted is effective in its implication that Offred is viewed as a possession or object rather than an individual, it is also effective in intriguing the reader by building suspense, how is she not being ‘wasted’ and why does she want? This early intimation foreshadows the knowledge that Offred has a purpose beyond her individuality that she is not satisfied with.
There is much sexual implication throughout the book, effecting a 1984-like state where sexual instinct is repressed – with only the high powered Commanders legally permitted to procreate - with sexual energies redirected into hatred and war. In chapter four Offred makes eye contact with a young Guardian. She imagines touching his face in defiance of the law thinking: “Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes”. The imagery in the word peepholes is of voyeuristic, illicit sex: which has the effect of enhancing the theme of taboo and illegality of recreational sex.
Offred also describes the Guardian and his companion as “Standing to attention, stiffly” taken literally, this shows the respect with which Handmaids are treated: however the phrase also has a sexual connotation. This double entendre again highlights the illegality of casual sex in Gilead by the use of a mischievous tongue-in-cheek remark rather than direct reference.
In this way Offred’s passive, yet very real, resistance begins to be shown. Offred’s opposition is also revealed...