PRESENTATION The Handmaid's Tale

PRESENTATION OF

THE HANDMAID'S TALE By MARGARET ATWOOD

What will we see

1. Information about the book

2. Book's milestone passage

3. Main themes in the book

4. A work of art

5. A "protest song"

Summary of the book

I offer you a modern summary of this book of modern times. The text takes place in a state where oppression reigns supreme in society. Women have a very low fertility rate. Maternity is then reserved for an elite, the Handmaids. Offred a servant girl will tell us about her daily life when she lived there.Between sadness, moments of joy and torment the narrator will give us the sovereigns of her former life. What we know about Offred is that she was married but we don't know what became of her husband or her supposed child. She is assigned to a family where the commander's wife does not love her. She has to be careful of other men, she cannot approach or even look at them, she has to respect strict rules regarding dress and behavior, at the risk of being denounced. In Gilead there are castes, and the maids are assigned to families to help them have children. They are formed by "Aunts" that everyone hates. The commander is also a hated character but who will have a relationship with Offred. Serena joy the commander's wife is unable to have children. She will push Offred to have a child with her husband's private driver. This will lead to an illegal relationship between Nick the driver and Offred. This situation will push Offred to flee as we learn at the end of the text.

My opinion about the book

To be honest I didn't really enjoy this reading although it was a very interesting format that bothered me a bit. The dark, gloomy atmosphere didn't bother me any more but it is very well felt, which is a good point. Still, you have to admit that the author is an excellent writer. The book delivers strong messages that are quite explicit overall.

Passage which marked me

Ofwarren is in the master bedroom, a good name for it; where this Commander and his Wife nightly bed down. She's sitting on their king-sized bed, propped with pillows : Janine, inflated but reduced, shorn of her former name. She's wearing a white cotton shift, which is hiked up over her thighs; her long broom-coloured hair is pulled back and tied behind her head, to keep it out of the way. Her eyes are squeezed closed , and this way I can almost like her. (…) The bankets stand ready, the small tub for bathing, the bowl of ice for Janine to suck. The rest of women sit cross-leg on the rug; there's a crownd of them, everyone in this district is supposed to be here.(..) Once a week we had movie's, after lunch and before our nap. (…) Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks, women hanging from trees,or upside-down, naked, with their legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed. Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.

Notice of passage

This passage challenged me because it is very explicit to me and depicts a violent society. The scenes in this chapter are absolutely horrible. It makes you feel a real empathy for the victim characters. We would like to get them out of this horror. It seems completely unimaginable to put someone through that. Giving birth in full view of everyone, viewing pornographic content - these are normally intimate things, and to put them forward like this is really to show the harshness of Gilead's system.

Author's name

The characters of this book are :

Nick Blaine : This is Commander Waterford's private driver. He is willing to break rules such as eye contact when he shouldn't. He has a relationship with Offred.

Offred : An american woman from a late twentieth-century liberal background, now forced to become a Handmaid for the new regime. She had a name, but it has been taken away because Handmaid's are referred to by name of the man they belong to :Offred is "Offred". Offred had a husband and a daughter, both of whom have been taken from her in the new regime.

Janine : A Handmaid from a different household who gives birth to a babyduring Offred's time in the Commander family.The women are at the Red Center at the same time,which is why Offred knows Janine's true name.Janine's describes being raped as a young teen, and the other women were instructed to blame her for the rape

Commander Fred Waterford : Fred Waterford is the husband of Serena Joy Waterford. Commander Waterford allows himself many illegal acts under the Gilead rules.

Aunt Lydia : This authoritarian and rather frightening character is a woman whose role is to train young women integrating the Red Center to become servants. She trains them, teaches them the rules of the new Gilhead Republic, but also punishes them if they disobey, cruelly, physically or psychologically.

Serena Joy Waterford : She is the wife of Commander Fred Waterford. Not being able to give birth and wanting it more than anything, she will not hesitate to go very far to get what she dreams of.

Aunt Elisabeth : A trainer at the Red Center, where women are retrained to become Handmaid's. She is in charge of teaching the Handmaid's about gynecology and is the one who tends to them when they are in labor.

Moira : She is Offred's childhood best friend. She became a kind of legend among the Handmaidens for having successfully escaped from the Red Centre.

Aunt Helena : A Red Center trainer who owned a Weight Watchers in the time before Gilead.

Ofglen : Another Handmaid,Offred's "twin", with whom she goes shopping. The twins are supposed to inform on each other if there is aberrant behavior, so Offred is on guard when she is with Ofglen. However, Ofglen is secretly a member of the resistance. Later, she is replaced by a different woman, who becomees "Ofglen".

Luke : Offred's lost husband,seen only through her flashbacks and dreams. She doesn't know if he is alive or dead, and we never find out his fate.

THEMES

FERTILITY Fertility is the reason for Offred's captivity and the source of his power, Gilead's major failure and his hope for the future. The issue of fertility is found throughout the story but is highlighted in Janine's delivery ceremony, where Janine's commander's wife pretends to give birth at the same time, and the simulated birth is treated as authentic. In this way, Gilead manages to remove the bond between the maid and the babies they are carrying in a version of sharing, the collective society has gone completely wrong. "Give me children, or else I die. There's more than one meaning to it.“ (p. 61). This is another example of the role of women. This relates to the book because as a handmaid, Offred is constantly being told by Aunt Lydia that if she isn’t fertile, she is worthless. Aunt Lydia acts as a form of propaganda for Gilead.

RELIGION Religion, especially the Old Testament, is also the justification for many of Gilead's wildest features. Many of the biblical quotations in the book are twisted. The theocracy is so rigid about its religious influences, and so emphatic about the specific rules it upholds, that it even forgets the essential virtues like charity, tolerance and forgiveness. « The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device : who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it ? »

LOVE Despite the ordeal she endured Offred has a deep and secret source of strength: her love. Although love may keep Offred complacent, allowing him to dream rather than simply rebel, it is also responsible for the book's greatest triumph, that love drives Nick to help Offred escape, which she manages more effectively than Moira or Ofglen. Her love for her mother, daughter, Luke, Moira, and ultimately Nick, allow her to stay sane, and live in her memories and emotions instead of the terrible world around her. "It is the lack of love that we die from. »

Work of art

This painting can for me be linked to the book and the theme of our sequence because it represents a barren woman and therefore has a connection with The Handmaid's Tale and the subject of fertility which is discussed. I also link this painting with the sequence because it is a kind of rebellion of contestation against society to be represented in this way.

PROTEST SONG

Lady Gaga - Born This Way https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi2yZighJXuAhUqx4UKHTwKBUgQyCkwAHoECAIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFY0__V4h7kM&usg=AOvVaw3j9-AT9dOsEfPYmV1tdf3b

I chose this feminist song by Lady Gaga because for me it is linked with the book. I see it as a kind of revenge for saying that women are insulted a lot in the book for denunciatory purposes, and this song is a way of saying "Fight for who you are". Since each character fights a little for her condition in Gilead the song is appropriate for that. It's related to "Art and Contestation" because we still challenge the prejudices of society with this music and it's also one of the messages of the book.

Thanks for taking the time to watch my presentation.