The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? draw on different narrative techniques to establish our relationship to their protagonists. Margaret Atwood allows the reader to share the thoughts of the main character, while Philip K. Dick makes the reader explore the mysteries behind the story. Atwood’s style works because she can directly show her readers what she wants. Dick’s opposing style works for him because he can present paradoxes and mysteries and let the reader form the conclusion. Both of these styles are skillfully utilized to create complex stories without losing the reader along the way.

Both of these works establish relationships between the reader and the protagonist. In Atwood’s, the reader feels empathy and sympathy for the main character, Offred. Dick’s story is less clear-cut. While the initial reaction is usually empathy and sympathy for the human Deckard, further study often leads to the controversy that Deckard may truly be an android. The goals of the authors differ greatly, and so do their narration styles. But they are both effective in getting across the author’s intentions.

Atwood needs to make the reader relate to the main character, to get inside the thoughts and feelings. So she uses certain style, for instance, to make the reader relate more to the character, she would have phrased that sentence: I need to make you relate to Offred, to get inside her head, and understand her thoughts and feelings. This sort of personal narrative of the thought process is the style of The Handmaid’s Tale. You learn Offred’s motivations and they are so perfectly articulated that you begin to yearn for the same things she does, and to despise the same things she does. This kind of personal relationship is necessary for the setting of the story. The best way to explain this future society and it’s rules and to make the reader truly have an emotional response to it, is to put the reader right into that society and let them feel what it’s like.

This is the way Atwood gets across her feelings about the future world that Offred lives in. She forms a close relationship with the reader and the character, and then shows the reader Offred’s feelings about different aspects of the world. This is not to say that everyone reading the book will get the exact same thing from it.