 A lot of postmodernist writing implies that experience is just carpet, and that whatever meaningful patterns

we discern in it are wholly illusory, comforting fictions. The difficulty, for the reader, of postmodernist
writing is not so much a matter of obscurity, which might be cleared up, as of uncertainty, which is endemic
and manifests itself on the level of narrative rather than style.
 labyrinths without exits.
 Post modernist writing tries to defy this law by seeking some alternative principle of composition. To these
alternatives I give the names: Contradiction, Permutation, Discontinuity, Randomness, Excess and The Short
Circuit.
 Contradiction could not be better epitomised than by the refrain and closing words of Samuel Beckett's The
Unnamable: 'You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.' Each clause negates the preceding one, as, throughout
the text, the narrator oscillates between irreconcilable desires and assertions.
 Both metaphor and metonymy involve selection and selection implies leaving something out. Postmodernism
writers sometimes defy this law by permutating alternative narrative lines in the same text
 Permutation subverts the continuity of texts, a quality we naturally expect from writing. It is the continuity of
realistic fiction, derived from spatial and temporal contiguities, that enables the world of the novel to
displace the real world in the reading experience. Postmodernism is suspicious of any kind of continuity. One
obvious sign of this is the fashion for composing fictions in very short sections, often only a paragraph in
length, often quite disparate in content, the textual breaks between sections being emphasised by capitalised
headings, numerals, or other typographical devices. A further stage in the pursuit of discontinuity is the
introduction of randomness into the writing or reading process:
 Some postmodernist writers have deliberately taken metaphoric or metonymic strategies to excess, tested
them, as it were, to destruction, parodied and burlesqued them in the process of using them, and thus sought
to escape from their tyranny.
 This process of interpretation assumes a gap between the text and the world, between art and life, which
postmodernist writing characteristically tries to short-circuit in order to administer a shock to the reader and
thus resist assimilation into conventional categories o the literary. Ways of doing this include: combining in
one work the apparently factual and the obviously fictional, introducing the author and the question of
authorship into the text, and exposing conventions in the act of using them. These meta-fictional ploys are
not themselves discoveries of the postmodernist writers-they are to be found in prose fiction at least as far
back as Cervantes and Sterne - but they appear so frequently in postmodernist writing and are pursued to
such lengths as to constitute a distinctively new development.
 As his own fictitious characters and at the very same time drawing attention to their fictitiousness. It thus
calls into question the whole business of reading and writing literary fictions.
 There is considerable disagreement among critics and aestheticians as to whether postmodernism is a really
significant and distinctive kind of art, or whether, being an essentially rule-breaking activity, it must always
be a minority mode, dependent on a majority of artists trying to keep to the rules

Deferred and withheld information

Atwood chooses to write the novel in the first person, so we can only know and experience what Offred knows,
experiences and remembers. And since Offred cannot record her ideas and experiences as she has them - because
writing is forbidden in Gilead - we cannot assume that her memories are meant to be accurate. As Offred says in chapter
38:
‘I can’t remember exactly, because I had no way of writing it down.’

Letting the reader suppose that Offred tells us only what comes into her mind at any particular time allows Atwood to
increase suspense, by delaying the telling of crucial facts. The first chapter in the novel is a perfect example of this, as the
novel opens with an unnamed narrator speaking of an unknown group - ‘we’ - in a strange and undefined situation,
controlled by ‘Aunts’ who seem anything but typically aunt-like, and by Angels carrying guns.
Although someone called Luke is mentioned in chapter 2, it isn’t until chapter 5 that we realise his relationship to Offred
when, suddenly, their child is introduced into the narrative. This revelation that Offred has had a husband and child adds a
completely new dimension to her circumstances. Yet the full horror of their attempted escape together from Gilead is not
revealed until later; Offred dreams about the loss of her loved ones, and we gradually piece together what happened in
their last days together.
Even then, we never do find out what has happened to Luke, and although Offred is shown her child’s photograph (in
chapter 35), we know nothing about where she is, because we are only told what Offred can tell us.
Similarly, with Moira and Offred’s mother, information about them is deferred:

 In particular, once we learn in chapter 22 about Moira’s escape from the Red Centre, we hear nothing more until
Offred encounters her at Jezebel’s. Then we are left to assume what Moira’s final fate will be
 Equally, although Offred recalls her mother at various times, the closest she comes to finding out what happened
after her mother’s arrest is when Moira tells Offred, at Jezebel’s, ‘I saw your mother.. in that film they showed us,
about the Colonies’.

And of course the most significant piece of withheld information is what happens to Offred herself - and what her real
name might be.

Different versions of events

Another way in which Atwood underlines that her novel is a construct is to have Offred herself insist on it, by giving the
reader different versions of the same event. This happens overtly in chapter 23, when Offred tells us that she thinks about
stabbing the Commander - then tells us:
‘in fact I don’t think about anything of the kind. I put that in only afterwards.’
A few lines later she tells us that the Commander asked her to kiss him ‘As if you meant it.’ and Offred adds, ‘He was so
sad’ before telling us, ‘That is a reconstruction too.’
Perhaps the most obvious example of Offred giving us different versions is her account in chapter 40 of her first visit to
Nick’s room. Having given us a description of love-making which makes her feel:
‘alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere’
she then abruptly says,
‘I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.’
Yet, once she has given us a more prosaic version of their sexual encounter, Offred declares, ‘It didn’t happen that way
either.’ She reminds us that:
‘all I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.’

 PERMUTATION (REORDERING)Both metaphorand metonymyinvolve selection but postmodernist writers

sometimes defy this law by permutating alternative narrative lines in the same text. Permutation subverts the
continuity of texts, a quality we naturally expect from writing.
 Postmodernism likes discontinuity, randomness, detachment from the narrative, changing the narrative, adding
additional narrative lines, etc. and never return to their original context
 Contradiction - Permutations (and Choice) - Discontinuity (lack of causation) - Randomness (no authorial
guidance in role of God/destiny) - Excess (example after example etc) - Short Circuit (breaking the frame or
exposing literary conventions)
