Identity In The Handmaid's Tale

In the book The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood presents the idea of altering old documents and presenting it with new text to enforce the idea of a past society, a change; palimpsests. This shows the current society Offred lives in was not to far from the past. Offred often compares the past to the present and the fact the timespan between the two was only a couple years yet are so different presents the idea of a new start, a second chance. This current society shows the intermission between two different lifestyles. The current lifestyle Offred lives is impacted by the transition from a free society to a patriarchal society. This is shown by using old buildings and locations and altering them so they fit the new society. One example is the building the Offred first lived; her high school. In the first line of the first page of the book, the reader is given a glimpse of the past, “We slept in what had once been the gymnasium [...] I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls” (Atwood 3). Here, this

Each play a part in how the reader interprets the situation and the story. One major motif is the concept of stripped identity. The Handmaids lack an actual name due to the fact they are forced take their husband's name with the addition of the prefix “of”, “My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden” (Atwood 96). The Handmaids are stripped of their identity and is replaced with a new one. This act is used repetitively to remind the readers these women are the property of men. Just like pets, these women have a little nickname. Their real names mean nothing to anyone else. A person’s name is one of the person’s form of identification, Without the person’s name, they do not technically personally exist in society; they are stripped to