Handmaid's Tale Epigraph Analysis

As Margaret Atwood once said, "You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' is from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid..." Today I will explore the significance of the three epigraphs within the "Handmaid's Tale" prior to chapter 1. I will firstly describe the background of the epigraphs and their relationships to the themes of the story. Then I will discuss the implications of each epigraph on the reader and finally I will suggest that through the epigraphs and other techniques including foreshadowing and biblical allusions, Atwood aims to introduce the reader to the themes of the text that they are about to read. Prior to my analysis of this dystopian novel, I shall define an epigraph which is a "phrase, quotation, or poem that is incorporated at the beginning of a story as a literary device as a summary/counter-example/allusion to wider themes or to ultimately link the writing to a wider classification of literature, either to invite comparison or to sophisticate a conventional context.”

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The first epigraph within Atwood's dystopian style Handmaid's Tale is one from the first book of the bible, Genesis [30:1-3] and alludes to the ancient Hebrew traditions in

This ironic proposal, puts forward a cannibalistic society where children would be sold as a material or food item so ultimately it allows the poor Irish families whom possess more children than they can afford, to gain an extra