English B-HL

The handmaid’s tale

By Margaret
Atwood
I Trimester-2022

Reading Plan No.

(Name- Grade) Juliana Andrea Zuleta 10A

(Date) 31/3/22
The handmaid´s Tale as a Dystopian novel.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian or anti-utopian novel – it presents the reader with a
dysfunctional
future society. Often texts that are set in an imaginary future are actually used to criticise real
aspects
of the author’s own society and it is possible to read The Handmaid’s Tale as a satire or
warning
(Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Huxley’s Brave New World are other examples of dystopian
novels and they make useful comparisons with The Handmaid’s Tale). One of the reasons why
Atwood’s novel is so disturbing is that there are historical parallels for the way Gilead is
organised and its citizens are controlled. In an interview Atwood explained that she intended
these parallels to be clear to the reader:

One of the tasks I set myself when writing the novel was to avoid including any practices that
had not already happened somewhere, at some time. One of the functions of the afterword is
to indicate the origins of some of the practices described in the novel. But it is vital to
understand that every single one of the practices described in the novel is drawn from the
historical record. (Margaret Atwood)

The ideas or issues below are all important in the handmaid’s tale. Can you think of Historical
parallels for them?

⮚ The handmaid´s uniform

⮚ Public executions?
⮚ Religious wars?
⮚ Propaganda and censorship?
⮚ Resistance movements?
⮚ Re-education?
⮚ Testifying?
⮚ Enforce religious conversion?

Can you think of any other ideas or issues in the novel which have historical parallels?

Summary.
Summarize each part of the story by mentioning the most important ideas. And how
they can be relevant to the story.

You can do these by writing them in a graphic organizer in bullet points or a text.

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BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 35

● Now there’s a space to be filled, a spacetime, between here and now and there and
then. The arrival of the tray, carried up the stairs as if for an invalid. An invalid, one who
has been invalidated. No valid passport. No exit.
● With our fresh passports that said we were not who we were: that Luke, for instance.
● I stayed in the car. I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just
this once and I’ll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that
would be of the least use or even interest I’ll never know, I don’t want to be telling this
story.
● ¿Love? said the Commander. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another. How
could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a
whim. Falling in love , we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it,
this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so
extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like
heaven, was always just around the corner. There were places you didn’t want to walk,
precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the
curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and
you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you
could tell by the fact that you were still alive. To keep your body in shape, for the man. If
you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a
refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being
I’ve left or been forced to leave behind me.
● The knock comes at my door. Cora, with the tray. But it isn’t Cora. “I’ve brought it for
you,” says Serena Joy. She’s holding it, a Polaroid print, square and glossy. “You can
only have it for a minute,” Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial. “I have to
return it, before they know it’s missing.” A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers
become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 36

● I knock on his door, “Up for a little excitement?” “Pardon?” I say. “Tonight I have a little
surprise for you,” It’s a garment, apparently, and for a woman. “Tonight I’m taking you

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 out.” “Out?” “Out of here,” he says. y. I want anything that breaks the monotony,
subverts the perceived respectable order of things. “Charming,” he says. “Now for the
face.” A lipstick, old and runny and smelling of artificial grapes, and some eyeliner and
mascara. He goes to the cupboard and gets out a cloak, with a hood. It’s light blue, the
color for Wives. This too must be Serena’s. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. “I’ve got
one for you.” The Commander has hold of my right hand, as if we’re teenagers at the
movies. He opened the door of the car for the Commander, and, by extension, for me
Past the second checkpoint, Nick says “Now I’ll have to ask you to get down onto the
floor of the car.” “We have to go through the gateway,” “Wives aren’t allowed.” Around
my wrist a tag, purple, on an elastic band, like the tags for airport luggage. Idiot, says
Moira

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 37

●
● They were dressed in all ways
● It’s a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic; but it’s something I understand.
● “It means you can’t cheat Nature,” he says. “Nature demands variety, for men.
● “So now that we don’t have different clothes,” I say, “you merely have different
women.” This is irony, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
● Our old signal. I have five minutes to get to the women’s wash room, which must be
somewhere to her right. I look around: no sign of it.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 38

● I find the entrance to the women’s washroom.

● But I can tell she is nevertheless an Aunt. The cattle prod on the table, its thong around
her wrist. No nonsense here.

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 ● Several women are sitting in the chairs and on the sofa, with their shoes off, smoking.
Then a toilet flushes and Moira comes out of a pink cubicle. She teeters towards me; I
wait for a sign. My arms go around her, the wires propping up her breasts dig into my
chest. We kiss each other, on one cheek, then the other. Then we stand back.
● This is what she says, whispers, more or less. I can’t remember exactly, because I had
no way of writing it down: I left that old hag Aunt Elizabeth tied up like a Christmas
turkey behind the furnace. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get out of the Center.
In that brown outfit. Girl Scouts was some use after all. “By this time I’d hit Mass. Ave.
and I knew where I was. I was worrying about something else: when these people saw
an Aunt coming up the walk, wouldn’t they just lock the door and pretend not to be
home? They must have thought they were some kind of army nurse. “So these people
let me in right away. It was the woman who came to the door. I told her I was doing a
questionnaire. They had two little kids, both under seven. “The other house was
Quakers too, and they were pay dirt, because they were a station on the Underground
Femaleroad. They were an older couple, in their fifties. I thought it might be the end for
me. When that was over they showed me a movie. Know what it was about? It was
about life in the Colonies. In the Colonies, they spend their time cleaning up. The other
Colonies are worse, though, the toxic dumps and the radiation spills. They figure you’ve
got three years maximum, at those, before your nose falls off and your skin pulls away
like rubber gloves. Other Colonies, not so bad, where they do agriculture: cotton and
tomatoes and all that. Colonies for men use gray dress, I guess it’s supposed to
demoralize the men, having to wear a dress. So after that, they said I was too
dangerous to be allowed the privilege of returning to the Red Center. They said I would
be a corrupting influence. I had my choice, they said, this or the Colonies.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 39

● The Commander has a room key. He shows it to me, slyly. I am to understand.I tell the
Commander just a minute, and go into the bathroom. My ears are ringing from the
smoke, the gin has filled me with lassitude.
● I saw your mother, Moira said. Where? I said. Not in person, it was in that film they
showed us, about the Colonies. There was a close-up, it was her all right. She was

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 wrapped up in one of those gray things but I know it was her. I can’t remember the last
time I saw her. She still had that jauntiness. When the man got the door open what we
found was chaos. There was furniture overturned, the mattress was ripped open,
bureau drawers upside-down on the floor, their contents strewn and mounded. But my
mother wasn’t there. Let’s get this over with or you’ll be here all night. Bestir yourself.
Move your flesh around, breathe audibly. It’s the least you can do.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 40

● “I won’t go outside with you,” she whispers. Odd, to hear her whispering, as if she is
one of us. Usually Wives do not lower their voices. “You go out through the door and
turn right. There’s another door, it’s open. Go up the stairs and knock, he’s expecting
you. “I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in,” he says. He doesn’t
smile. “Come on,” he says. “We haven’t got much time.” With his arm around my
shoulders he leads me over to the fold-out bed, lies me down. He even turns down the
blanket first. He begins to unbutton, then to stroke, kisses beside my ear. “No
romance,” he says. “Okay?”

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 41

● I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a
better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by
trivia. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body
caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I
will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.
● This is the story, then. I went back to Nick. Time after time, on my own, without Serena
knowing. With the Commander I close my eyes, even when I am only kissing him good-
night. I do not want to see him up close. Keep on doing everything exactly the way you
were before, Nick says. Don’t change anything. Otherwise they’ll know.
● Ofglen is giving up on me. She whispers less, talks more about the weather. I do not
feel regret about this. I feel relief.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 42

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 ● This is a district Salvaging, for women only. Salvagings are always segregated. It was
announced yesterday. On the stage, to the left, are those who are to be salvaged: two
Handmaids, one Wife. Wives are unusual, and despite myself I look at this one with
interest. I want to know what she has done. Reading, Unchastity, or an attempt on the
life of her Commander, They can do almost anything to us, but they aren’t allowed to
kill us, Or attempted escape, I’ve seen it before, the white bag placed over the head,
the woman helped up onto the high stool as if she’s being helped up the steps of a bus,
steadied there, the noose adjusted delicately around the neck, like a vestment, the stool
kicked away.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 43

● The three bodies hang there, even with the white sacks over their heads looking
curiously. “This man,” says Aunt Lydia, “has been convicted of rape.” Her voice
trembles with rage, and a kind of triumph. I might add that this crime involved two of
you and took place at gunpoint. It was also brutal. I will not offend your ears with any
details, except to say that one woman was pregnant and the baby died. He staggers—
is he drugged?—and falls to his knees. His eyes are shriveled up inside the puffy flesh
of his face, as if the light is too bright for him. She pushes him down, sideways, then
kicks his head viciously, one, two, three times, sharp painful jabs with the foot, well
aimed. “Don’t be stupid. He wasn’t a rapist at all, he was a political. He was one of
ours. I knocked him out. Put him out of his misery. Don’t you know what they’re doing
to him?”
● I want to go to bed, make love, right now.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 44

● Things are back to normal. How can I call this normal?

● I wait at the corner for Ofglen. She’s late. I see her and notice nothing at first. Then, as
she comes nearer, I think that there must be something wrong with her. She looks
wrong. She is altered in some indefinable way; she’s not injured, she’s not limping. It’s
as if she has shrunk. Whispers, very quickly, her voice faint as dry leaves. “She hanged

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 herself,” she says. “After the Salvaging. She saw the van coming for her. It was better.”
Then she’s walking away from me down the street.

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 45

● I stand a moment, emptied of air, as if I’ve been kicked. So she’s dead, and I am safe,
after all. She did it before they came. I feel a great relief. I feel thankful to her. She has
died that I may live. I will mourn later.
● I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am
abject.
● Serena Joy has come out of the front door; she’s standing on the steps. She calls to
me. What is it she wants? “I trusted you,” she says. “I tried to help you.” “Pick up that
disgusting thing and get to your room. Just like the other one. A slut. You’ll end up the
same.”

BULLETS POINTS CHAPTER 46

● Waiting. What are you waiting for? But I feel serene, at peace, pervaded with
indifference. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it
conveys nothing. There are a number of things I could do: I could set fire to the House, I
could tear my bedsheet into strips and twist it into a rope of sorts and tie one end to the
leg of my bed and try to break the window. Which is shatterproof, I could go to the
Commander, fall on the floor, my hair disheveled, as they say, grab him around the
knees, confess, weep, implore, Instead I could noose the bedsheet round my neck,
hook myself up in the closet, throw my weight forward, choke myself off, I could hide
behind the door, wait until she comes, hobbles along the hall, bearing whatever
sentence, penance, punishment, jump out at her, knock her down, kick her sharply and
accurately in the head, I could walk at a steady pace down the stairs and out the front
door and along the street, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and see how far
I could get. I could go to Nick’s room, over the garage, as we have done before. I could
wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter.
● Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in midair under the
chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman

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 made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I
was alone in here?
● As I’m standing up I hear the black van. Worse is coming, then. I expect a stranger, but
it’s Nick who pushes open the door, flicks on the light. “It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go
with them.” He calls me by my real name. Why should this mean anything? “You must
be crazy.”
● “What has she done?” says Serena Joy. She wasn’t the one who called them, then.
Whatever she had in store for me, it was more private. “I need to see your
authorization,” says the Commander. “You have a warrant?” “Not that we need one, sir,
but all is in order,” says the first one again. “Violation of state secrets.”
● Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given
myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped. And so I step up,
into the darkness within; or else the light.

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The characters.
Make a list of the characters that appear in the book, then write a description for each one of
them as you find information in the story, focus on their traits, and the conflicts they may have.
Support your description with textual evidence from the story. Include the page number. As
you fill out this part, think about the importance of this character for the story. (You present the
information on a chart or text)

★ Important Characters
★ 2ry characters

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

★ Important Characters

Offred: Long Hair (page 62

Luke: Husband of Offred, pedantic men

Ofglen: Her eyes are brown, she walks demurely, head down with little steps like a pig (page
19)

Moira: Funny

Women on the Jezebels Club:

Aunt on the bathroom:

Japanese and Arabs on the club:

Rita: She is a Martha, dressed by a green dress like a surgeon, negative one, age of 60
(page48)

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Cora: She is a Martha, dressed by a green dress like a surgeon, positive one, younger than rita
(page48)

The commander: His hair is gray silver(Page 57)

Serena Joy: Petite woman, she could smile and cry at the same time, her lips were thin,
helded that way, withhs small vertical lines around them that you used to see in advertisements
for lumps cosmeticas, is blond, her eyebrows are permanent and thin, her eyelids were tired
looking, her eyes were hostile blue of a midsummer sky, a blue that shuts you out, cute nose
too small for his face, but it was large, chin clenched like a fist. (page 14 & 15)

Aunt Lydia: Yellowish teeth that stuck out a little (page55)

The Doctor: Brown hair and eyes (page 60-61)

★ 2ry characters

Econowives:

Aunt Helena & Aunt Sara: The patrol of the Red Center, they had electric cattle prods slungs
on thongs from their leather belts. (page 4) Aunt Helena is fat (page 71)

Aunt Elizabeth:

Nick: The driver, smells fishy, he has a french face, whit creases around the mouth when he
smiles, provocative (page 18)

Guardians: These two are very young, one mustache is still sparse and his face is long and
mournful like a sheep but with the large full eyes of a dog, spaniel no terrier, his skin is pale,
and the other one face is stil blotchy

Janine: Partner of the pregnet woman (page 27)

Bodies Hanging:

Offren Mother:

Ofwarren: Pregnant woman. (page 26)

Tourist: They were curious (page 27)

Katherin Bacall & Katherin Hepburn: Women on eir on, making up their minds. Part of the
Humphry Bogart festival. (page 25)

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Alma, Janine, Dolores, June: Handmaid´s (page 4)

The two one of the cigarretes store

The Setting
Include here relevant information regarding the setting, the descriptions here.
Tip: If you want you can add and image that resembles the setting that you are
describing.

● There was a lot of corruption in that society.

● Most prefer death until they go to a colonie
● There was a club full of all types of women who preferred being there before going to
the red center, colonies or streets.
● You reserve your women on the club
● Also in the club there were rich women.

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Conflicts
Almost all works of literature are centered around a conflict. It is a fight or struggle between
two opposite forces. By identifying the nature of the conflict or conflicts within a work, you can
identify the events, the themes and the ideas in the story.

How could you link the themes and conflicts of this section of the story to the core themes
from the IB. Please Explain.

⮚ Conflict
The bad use of the theocracy.
Women were subjected to rules that violated their rights.
Penalty represented in death.
Devalue of women body.

⮚ IB Theme
Identities
Experiences
Social Organization

⮚ Explanation
When we talk about identities we referred about lifestyles, health and wellbeing, Beliefs
and values among other things, and this theme is related to the relate when it show us
how women it’s force it to have an unfair lifestyle, giving us examples on their daily,
basically telling them that they just have one identity; removing the term of freedom
from their heads and force them to accept it as it was ordered, although we can see
experiences when they as I already said in their daily, how those traditions conserved in
that politic are represented in each day and the last one but not less important is the
Social organization, as far as we know, in gilead all is governed by a theocracy
including cruel laws, leaving apart the wellbeing of the society as a town, when they
supposed to fight for a correct society.

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