The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a book built upon shaky ground. It is a story pieced together years after it occurred by a man who did not care for the heroine--only for her commander. So it makes sense that this shaky account--with its biased interpreter and at times lack of evidence--would conclude with a shaky ending, one where our heroine, Offred, is taken into the unknown, either to safety or insured death. Both possibilities for her ending are equally unsettling, the kind of unknown that sends chills down one's spine, for even if she is taken to safety, her life has been folded over so many times, reinvented then destroyed, that the chances of her becoming the woman she once was is slim to none. In both the conclusion of Offred’s
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It is not an autobiography, or a research paper; rather, it is one woman, broken down by trauma and time, recording her life, emotions, and thoughts years after the event occurs. She hopes for an ending--clean-cut and put away--throughout her retelling of her story. She states, “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling [...] If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending [...] and real life will come after it” (Atwood 39). An ending like she wanted would end with her family, perhaps a picnic with her daughter and husband, not unlike the one they were pretending to have when they attempted to escape. Yet if she got that perfect ending, than the book would have lost its power. Perfection does not gain interest, questioning does. And so, instead of a perfect, fairy-tale reunion, she steps into the unknown, “into the darkness within; or else the light” (Atwood 295). In this way, ending on possibility, she leaves the book with all the power, not sharing with the reader, not allowing them the comfort of knowing, for she did not …show more content…
The simple phrase “any questions?” (311) is a way to end a lecture, where one man has been talking at his audience, explaining his one-sided beliefs, in a way that makes the audience feel validated. This control of language is a taunting way to exert his dominance over his audience. For who would speak up and ask questions after this so-called expert has explained everything known about Offred’s story? Who would know to ask him why he does not focus on the role of women in Gilead, when all he focuses on is The Commander? Piexoto, like Luke and The Commander, controls the language of the society. “All three men merge” (Miner 154) in the fact that they all manipulate the language to wield power over their listener. For The Commander and Luke, it was word games and Latin, for Piexoto it is the selective presentation of information at hand, and this receiving end is where the story ends. The entire compilation of handmaid’s tale’s is but a trickle of information given to the reader, selectively shown to convey a specific, unsatisfying ending. As the reader, we want to know not only Offred’s unanswered story, but also her uninterrupted, raw story; the one that Piexoto heard on the tapes. Yet in the same way that Offred’s story would lose meaning to answers, these historical Notes would lose their power to history. Knowing that we are reading through a sexist filter reminds the readers that
It is not an autobiography, or a research paper; rather, it is one woman, broken down by trauma and time, recording her life, emotions, and thoughts years after the event occurs. She hopes for an ending--clean-cut and put away--throughout her retelling of her story. She states, “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling [...] If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending [...] and real life will come after it” (Atwood 39). An ending like she wanted would end with her family, perhaps a picnic with her daughter and husband, not unlike the one they were pretending to have when they attempted to escape. Yet if she got that perfect ending, than the book would have lost its power. Perfection does not gain interest, questioning does. And so, instead of a perfect, fairy-tale reunion, she steps into the unknown, “into the darkness within; or else the light” (Atwood 295). In this way, ending on possibility, she leaves the book with all the power, not sharing with the reader, not allowing them the comfort of knowing, for she did not …show more content…
The simple phrase “any questions?” (311) is a way to end a lecture, where one man has been talking at his audience, explaining his one-sided beliefs, in a way that makes the audience feel validated. This control of language is a taunting way to exert his dominance over his audience. For who would speak up and ask questions after this so-called expert has explained everything known about Offred’s story? Who would know to ask him why he does not focus on the role of women in Gilead, when all he focuses on is The Commander? Piexoto, like Luke and The Commander, controls the language of the society. “All three men merge” (Miner 154) in the fact that they all manipulate the language to wield power over their listener. For The Commander and Luke, it was word games and Latin, for Piexoto it is the selective presentation of information at hand, and this receiving end is where the story ends. The entire compilation of handmaid’s tale’s is but a trickle of information given to the reader, selectively shown to convey a specific, unsatisfying ending. As the reader, we want to know not only Offred’s unanswered story, but also her uninterrupted, raw story; the one that Piexoto heard on the tapes. Yet in the same way that Offred’s story would lose meaning to answers, these historical Notes would lose their power to history. Knowing that we are reading through a sexist filter reminds the readers that