How Does Margaret Atwood Use Language In The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood takes place in the totalitarian theocratic regime of Gilead with a first person narration of the main character, Offred. This society used biblical language and omission of valuable information to manipulate the general public into submission. Offred has a powerful understanding of how language can influence the population as she experiences it firsthand and uses the same power as a recorder. The recorder has a power that contrasts with her role in the Commander’s household. As the recorder of her own story she controls its presentation, the reader is subject to her unconscious bias. The experiences she has had define the way the reader will think about Gilead. She conveys her intense emotions throughout

the length of the story from her feelings about palimpsest to her desire for genuine human contact. The narrator describes every situation but she has the advantage of reconstructing the story with the time to think about word choice, tone, and imagery. Offred uses her role as recorder to detail the violent situations, fanatical religion, and gender roles of the Gilead society, using literary devices to evoke a strong reaction in the audience.

Gilead uses violence as a punishment and to suppress the hopes of a rebellion.

She uses beautiful imagery but there is always a dark undertone beneath her words, in this case alluding to the violence of suicide :“A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.”(pg.7). She uses informal diction to appeal to a large group of people and yet abstract sentences indicate a high level of intelligence within her character. She creates this dark atmosphere in a plain room because she remembers the way life was before. Her use of simile is there to represent the forceful nature of Gilead that has taken away from all women regardless of the social hierarchy between them. Violence is used to beat people into submission such as the use of it onto Moira after her attempted escape, “"I am still praying but what I am seeing is Moira's feet, the way they looked after they'd brought her back. Her feet did not look like feet at all. They looked like drowned feet, swollen and boneless, except for the color. The looked like lungs." (pg 91). Offred uses figurative language within this passage to compare Moira’s feet to a collapsed lung, she details it using adjectives like “swollen” to create a strong uncomfortable

visual.

Religion is a means to an end in the Gilead society, evidenced by the palimpsest imagery of the Bible.

The Bible has been rewritten such as the following: Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out, too…” (pg.89 ). In this passage, we can see that the focus of the government is to keep women acquiescent they have written over the text but. Religion is used as a weapon against the people of Gilead and despite being a non-believer, religion has impacted Offred. One recurring symbol that Offred presents us with is the egg to represent female fertility and an unborn child, aspects of life that government is obsessed with. She says, “Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one finger. But possibly this is how I’m supposed to react. If I have an egg, what more can I want?” (pg.111). Offred is self-aware of her obedience to the system, even within her own story. Offred means that the only thing worse than being a Handmaiden is being a Unwoman which can be prevented by the existence of an “egg” or rather a

child.

Gender roles within Gilead’s society are clearly defined for men and women. In a state without freedom of speech, the choice of words and tone can define everything. The female identity is lost with the neologism that indicates the Handmaid's’ new name. As our main character so eloquently says, "My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter" (page 84). Offred describes a dissociation between the role she plays in Gilead to the independent working woman she was before. The tone of this passage is contentious to the wishes of the government. Gilead began supposedly to end violence and the male gaze towards women, the real reason is because of infertility caused by environmental concerns. The fanatical believers find a way to justify oppression. Aunt Lydia said, “[i]n the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.” (pg 24). This passage evidences Gilead beliefs that they give women freedom from harassment from men but the Handmaids are being coerced into procreation, their only remaining role in society.

In conclusion, Offred has the opportunity to defy Gilead with her recording and chooses to do so with a personal flair of literary device. She is an apt storyteller because she recognizes her own biases throughout the story. Offred is not the only Handmaid who records her story but with the paranoia existing among the women and the Eyes who are always watching her she is courageous for daring to tell it. Violence is done publicly and as the recorder of the story Offred describes it with a candid tone, striking imagery and specially picked words. Offred uses the situations she is forced into to her advantage by retelling it for posterity, not only with violence but religion and the gender roles she conforms to in order to survive. Atwood uses Offred as a tool to reflect the hopelessness of Gilead for the women who are given the short end of the stick, within the totalitarian regime and the long history of sexism in America.