The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood's “The Handmaids Tale” is about a fictitious totalitarian state in the not-too-distant future. The main character Offred has the task of the maid, she was assigned to a commander and must be at his service once a month, so that she will get pregnant by him. This is necessary to maintain the population, because the population is slowly dying out and the birth rate is falling steadily. The system is well thought out, perfectly clear and ice cold. This story is very diverse it its setup, the reader is submerged in a joining of style, the perfect setting, a well throughout plot and theme that pulls the reader in via the connection that flourishes throughout the story with the main character.

Plot: In a fictional state in 2195,

Offred is the narrator, readers watch the story unfold through her perspective. The reader only knows the same information that Offred knows, a strong bond gets created as there is a closeness to her and her feelings that gets established, a connection and view in to her memories is given. The story begins with one, as we learn in the next chapter, reminding Offred of their training time in the "Red Center". The reader immediately gets a sense of the oppression taking place, the attempt of silencing each individual and the fear of speaking out that has been implemented on these young woman, especially Offred: “We learned to whisper almost without sound” (Atwood 4). Fragments and flashbacks from her past dragging through the entire book interrupt the narrative from the house in which she now lives. Her memories portray her in the past tense, the here and now in the commander's house where she lives is told in the present. Through these two sides, the narrative takes on a new dimension that makes it look as if it had actually been written by a woman in such a situation. It describes an incredible amount of details, which are then linked again with memories of the better past. Often, the clear, structured description of a space or situation slips away into lyrical, hackneyed phrases or rhetorical questions that make it difficult to read fluently, often stopping you and rereading the last phrase of a passage to follow the

It contains a lot of food for thought, many descriptions of feelings of an oppressed woman and complicated philosophical trains of thought, which make it a exciting read. It is a story full of buried hopes and suppressed dreams, a tale of a woman who has only her thoughts. Readers begin to appreciate freedom and become aware of many things that seem so natural. It is a highly thought-out and reasonably presented vision of a future that is not at all impossible and unimaginable. In the midst of the descriptions of this desolate ideal image, the maid-servant Offred sits and meditates on her life, both about her past as well as about her present. Through these multi-layered reflections and memories, the "new world" becomes a human component, a testimony that even in the coldest system the individual still exists and suffers and will fight to