book review of handmaid's tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

By margaret atwood.

'The Handmaid’s Tale' has never been more popular than it is today. The novel was published in 1985 in Canada, but over the last several years, it has had a massive resurgence in popularity.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

This is primarily due to the fact that it was made into a Hulu Television series, prompting women, as well as men, from around the world to repurpose the symbols of oppression in the novel as ways of protest. 

The Handmaid’s Tale as a Dystopian Novel

Aside from its popularity with contemporary readers and television audiences, The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the best dystopian/speculative fiction novels ever written. It ranks among the likes of 1984 , We, and A Clockwork Orange. These novels all seek to convey something about human nature, something dark and twisted that overtakes the humanity’s better nature and leaves the world in a state of desperation whether that is a society’s need to feel safe, no matter the consequences for freedom or an overwhelming greed and anger that leads to personal destruction. 

But more importantly, what these novels, and others, have in common with The Handmaid’s Tale is a hope. That is, a hope that things could be different, that life might get better, or that someone, somewhere, will be willing to show kindness or mercy. Offred’s hope mostly comes from within, but also from her brief meetings with Ofglen, a member of the resistance group Mayday, and from her moments of peace with Nick. Her life as a Handmaid in Gilead is a twisted knot of fear mixed with a desperate desire to see her daughter again. 

Ceremony in The Handmaid’s Tale 

One of Atwood’s most powerful storytelling techniques is her ability to craft very real-seeming events and policies that outline this world’s structure. In order for a dystopian, futurist novel to work, readers must be convinced, at least to a point, that everything occurring is possible. Atwood understands this and looked to history, and specifically religion, to inform her choices.

It’s clear from the start of the novel that Gilead’s foundational principles come from a reading of the Old Testament . There are numerous references to stories from the Bible, characters, and practices. Atwood allowed in the history of female prosecution , specifically the Salem Witch Trials, to make the treatment of these women far more likely. 

But, what the novel depends on more than anything else is the reader’s understanding of the inherently sexist nature of our society. Those who dismiss the novel or the television show that followed it as impossible are likely not as tuned into the realities of the home, workplace, and the broader world for women as are those who see how possible it truly is.

There are countries around the world today where the practices of sexual slavery and the broader domination of women would seem commonplace. While at the same time , there are those in which politicians and religious leaders are seeking to implement policies that would erode women’s rights for generations. The Handmaid’s Tale , just like 1984 and A Brave New World, is a warning. 

The Past and Present in The Handmaid’s Tale

The novel is structured in two vaguely defined sections . One, which is commonly known as the “night” section, focuses on Offred and how she is, as an individual, handling her life as a Handmaid. The other section is broader. It taps into the wider world of Gilead and the struggles of all the Handmaids in Offred’s circle. In both of these sections of Offred’s story, she jumps around in time. Through a series of remarkably poignant flashbacks, she tells her story.

Atwood made a choice to provide these as a series of scenes rather than as a cohesive look at who Offred used to be. But, even at the end of the novel, there is still so much that’s a mystery. While in some novels this might leave the reader disappointed, in the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, readers, or at least this reader, was left wondering, thinking for days after about who Offred was and the lives of the other Handmaid’s used to live. 

One of the most noteworthy details that’s left out of the novel is the protagonist’s true name. Offred is a disturbing combination of the word “Of” and her commander’s first name, “Fred.” This is just one of the many creatively terrifying ways that Atwood confirms for the reader the Handmaid’s (almost) total domination by the men in Gilead. Each woman around Offred shares a different part of herself for the story. Some do share their names, others share their fears, and one Handmaid, in particular, shares her determination to do something about their situation. Offred goes back and forth between wanting to risk her life to destroy Gilead while at the same time wanting to do everything she can just to find her daughter. 

The Future in The Handmaid’s Tale

Offred’s future is one of the most curious parts of the novel. Atwood concludes the story by whisking Offred off in a car with either members of the residence or Eyes or have come to execute and/or torture her. This is just anther part of OFfred’s story that’s up to the reader to interpret. Does The Handmaid’s Tale have a happy ending? Was Offred affection and trust of Nick completely misplaced?

One of the most curious and somewhat disconcerting sections of The Handmaid’s Tale comes at the end of Offred’s story after what seems like the end of the novel. Atwood jumps into the future while at the same time revealing that Gilead does eventually collapse. The readers find themselves in a classroom, listening to a lecture on Offred’s life and Gilead from a Professor named Piexito. But, what quickly becomes clear is that not everything has changed. Gilead might’ve collapsed, but the opinions that allowed it to exist in the first place are still around. This is a thoughtful conclusion to the book, although one that takes away, at least on a first reading, from the powerful mystery of Offred’s escape or capture. 

The Handmaid's Tale Book Review: Atwood's Dystopian Masterpiece

Book Title: The Handmaid's Tale

Book Description: The Handmaid's Tale is Margaret Atwood's best-known novel. In it, readers find themselves in Gilead, a totalitarian theocracy that abuses women in order to bestow healthy babies on wealthy couples.

Book Author: Margaret Atwood

Book Edition: First US Edition

Book Format: Hardcover

Publisher - Organization: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Date published: October 15, 1985

ISBN: 0-395-34534-3

Number Of Pages: 311

• Writing Style
• Lasting Effect on Reader

The Handmaid's Tale Review

The Handmaid’s Tale  is a classic of the dystopian and speculative fiction genres. It is generally considered to be Margaret Atwood’s masterpiece, one that has resonated throughout the decades since it was written. Readers come away from  The Handmaid’s Tale,  chilled by the depictions of violence and abuse within Atwood’s fictional world, Gilead. But, the novel also leaves readers with the hope that things are going to change for the main character and the broader world, she is forced to inhabit. 

• Terrifyingly realistic depiction of a totalitarian theocracy
• Creative and impactful writing style and use of flashbacks. 
• The right balance of mystery and certainty. 
• Undefined conclusion that leaves readers unsure of what happens to the main character. 
• Lack of description in regards to what’s happening in other parts of the United States. 
• Readers who are sensitive to subjects like mental and physical abuse may have trouble reading the novel. 

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

About the Book

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood has written numerous novels, essays, collections of poetry, and even graphic novels.  She is considered to be one of Canada’s best and most popular writers.

Atwood Facts

Explore ten of the most interesting facts about Atwood's life, habits, and passions.

Atwood's Best Books

Explore the ten best books Atwood wrote.

Atwood, the Feminist and Enviromentalist

When you say the name “Margaret Atwood,” it is likely that images of women in red gowns and white bonnets and the near future come to mind.

The canoe glides, carrying the two of us, around past the leaning trees . . . The direction is clear, I see I’ve been planning this, for how long I can’t tell. Margaret Atwood

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The handmaid's tale, common sense media reviewers.

Gripping dystopian novel of religious state against women.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

The Handmai'd Tale is a highly regarded example of

Like most dystopian novels, The Handmaid's Tale in

The narrator, known as "Offred," has the courage t

The threat of corporal punishiment hangs over all

Nonreproductive sex is prohibited in Gilead, punis

Profanity is prohibited in Gilead, but swear words

Drinking, recreational drugs, and smoking are all

Parents need to know that The Handmaid's Tale is a powerful, potentially disturbing dystopian satire set in a future America where women have been stripped of all their civil rights. It features strong language, emotional and physical violence, and a couple of graphic sex scenes. The corpses of dissidents are…

Educational Value

The Handmai'd Tale is a highly regarded example of dystopian fiction, a piece of satire specific to its date of origin and still relevant many years later and in many other cultures. Nominated for the Booker Prize and a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, it is frequently required reading in school and is often the target of censorship campaigns. It can serve as a springboard for discussions about religion, law, feminism, and many other topics.

Positive Messages

Like most dystopian novels, The Handmaid's Tale instructs by negative example. Gilead is shown to be a hierarchical, monotheocratic patriarchy. Women have no autonomy, no control over finances, their bodies, or their intellectual pursuits. Author Margaret Atwood is most harsh in her depiction of fundamentalism of any kind, rather than any particular form of religion or government.

Positive Role Models

The narrator, known as "Offred," has the courage to question her captivity and hope for a day of freedom. Over the course of the novel, she begins to rebel in subtle ways.

Violence & Scariness

The threat of corporal punishiment hangs over all the characters in The Handmaid's Tale. The corpses of dissidents are hung in public as grim reminders of the cost of rebellion. Offred does not witness much violence firsthand, but she learns of handmaids who have committed suicide by hanging. The most violent scene in the novel involves a Salvaging, a public ceremony where the women are whipped into a frenzy and then allowed to beat an accused prisoner to death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Nonreproductive sex is prohibited in Gilead, punishable by exile or even death. As a handmaid, Offred must participate in the Ceremony, in which she lies between the legs of the Commander's Wife and then has sex with the Commander. (This is the novel's most sexually explicit scene.) Later, Offred spends time at a brothel as a guest of the Commander and even develops a sexual relationship with another character.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Profanity is prohibited in Gilead, but swear words cannot be completely eradicated. "S--t" is used relatively frequently, as both an explitative and as a reference to feces. "Bitch," "tits," "damn" and "goddamn" are employed once or twice each. "F--k" and variations of it are used in the Ceremony scene.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinking, recreational drugs, and smoking are all prohibited in Gilead. Offred eventually learns, however, that alcohol and tobacco are available to the most powerful men. Scenes late in the novel are set in a brothel where drinking and smoking occur.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Handmaid's Tale is a powerful, potentially disturbing dystopian satire set in a future America where women have been stripped of all their civil rights. It features strong language, emotional and physical violence, and a couple of graphic sex scenes. The corpses of dissidents are hung in public as grim reminders of the cost of rebellion. There is mention of handmaids who have committed suicide by hanging. The most violent scene in the novel involves a public ceremony where women are whipped into a frenzy and then allowed to beat an accused person to death. The novel was adapted for the award-wining television series of the same name that premiered in 2017.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (17)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Blessed Be!

What's the story.

The narrator of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, known only as "Offred," tells of her life in the monotheocracy of Gilead, in what used to be the United States, sometime in the near future. She is a handmaid, kept to breed with "the Commander" and provide an heir at a time when the human birthrate is dangerously low. As she remembers the years before her captivity and begins to dream of an end to her captivity, Offred develops new relationships with the Commander, his Wife and their driver. But can she trust any of them?

Is It Any Good?

Details matter to Margaret Atwood, and Offred's tale is related with precision and deep compassion. The Handmaid's Tale is one of the most acclaimed dystopian novels of the 20th century. An uncompromising portrait of a totalitarianism and institutional misogyny, it critiques fundamentalism in all its forms.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why dystopian novels -- like The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and The Hunger Games (2008) -- continue to be such a popular genre.

Why do you think author Margaret Atwood appends "Historical Notes" to the main narrative of the novel?

Do you think women's rights are in jeopardy today? Where and how?

In what ways can religion can shape government -- and vice versa?

Book Details

• Author : Margaret Atwood
• Genre : Literary Fiction
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Anchor Books
• Publication date : September 13, 1985
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 16 - 17
• Number of pages : 311
• Last updated : February 4, 2020

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THE HANDMAID'S TALE

by Margaret Atwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 17, 1985

Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.

The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.

Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.

Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985

ISBN: 038549081X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985

LITERARY FICTION

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edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston

by Margaret Atwood

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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by Mark Z. Danielewski

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale

by The Cowl Editor on October 28, 2021

Arts & Entertainment

Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret atwood’s chilling dystopian vision.

Tully Mahoney ’23

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a chilling exposé of a dystopian reality in which an extreme regime overtakes the US government and creates an ultra-patriarchal, religious state known as the Republic of Gilead. The novel is told from the point of view of a Handmaid, Offred, whose only duty is to produce children for a Commander, a Gilead official, and his wife. She is subjected to participate in a “Ceremony,” a non-consensual ritual that Handmaids undergo in order to conceive children. The main themes that Atwood highlights in the novel are women’s limited choices, the subjugation of women in patriarchal societies, and the female desire for independence.

Some events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale are very contradictory of the Christian faith, yet the extremist government in the novel justifies these acts using Christianity. Non-consensual sex, adultery, murder, and pre-marital sex are just a few examples of this phenomenon. Such acts are fundamental sins and appear contradictory to a religious state. Atwood’s deep dive into an extremist interpretation of theology, paired with an equally extreme patriarchal mindset, led her to stray from typical Christian dogma.  

On sites like GoodReads, some readers gave The Handmaid’s Tale poor ratings due to Atwood’s lack of usage of quotation marks. These reviewers ignore the importance of her message and instead cling to grammatical choices. Atwood is fully aware of when and where it is proper to use quotation marks, yet she broke this rule with intention and purpose. If one’s main argument against a novel is its grammatical correctness, then they are not truly looking at its deeper meaning.  

The Handmaid’s Tale will make readers love it while simultaneously hating it. There were sections of this novel that hurt to read, forcing some people to picture uncomfortable scenes that they would have never imagined, even in their wildest dreams. A book that makes a reader cringe as they read, yet compels them to keep reading, is a book that is worth one’s time. This dystopian world is a feminist’s nightmare, yet its terrifying reality opens readers’ eyes to the warning that Atwood is attempting to convey as she demonstrates what life would be like if humans adhered to extremist misogynistic views. Notably, the sense of horror present throughout The Handmaid’s Tale is not only limited to its women and their lack of independence, but is also seen in the men who have near-total power in their society, yet show no signs of joy, happiness, or love, which are three components of truly living.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel that is important for people of all walks of life to read. History is taught because everyone must learn about the past to not repeat its mistakes. Reading The Handmaid’s Tale can help prevent the realization of a society like described in the novel, one that allowed for a horrible reality for women.

Atwood has a wonderful ability to make a distant reality feel real. Readers are able to see Offred’s world, feel her contempt, and hear her conversations, which will transform their current views on the society in which they live. The Handmaid’s Tale feels very slow in the beginning half, but it is worth pushing through because this section of the text provides a lot of context for its second half, which will leave readers unable to put the book down.

The Handmaid’s Tale has been made into a Hulu TV show for those who are less inclined towards reading or like to pair their books with imagery in film. This reviewer must note that she could not get past the first episode because she felt like it strayed too far from the book and was not an accurate depiction. Nevertheless, the series does a fair job of conveying the general idea of the novel.

Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Let’s take a journey today into the dystopian world of one of the most iconic novels I’ve stumbled upon – “The Handmaid’s Tale” by the brilliant Margaret Atwood . I first came across this book in a college literature course. The somber cover and intriguing title pulled me in, and once I dived into the pages, there was no looking back.

Book Summary of The Handmaid’s Tale

Our narrator, Offred, gives us a first-person account of her life under the regime. She tells us about her previous life, her attempts to escape with her husband and daughter, and how she landed in the ‘Rachel and Leah’ re-education center, a.k.a. the Red Center. In the Red Center, women are brainwashed and prepared for their roles as Handmaids. Offred’s life changes when she is assigned to the household of Commander Fred (hence her name, Offred), where she is expected to carry his child.

Book Review of The Handmaid’s Tale

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a chilling portrayal of a dystopian future that isn’t too hard to imagine, which is what makes it so terrifying. Margaret Atwood ‘s writing is sharp and evocative, painting a picture of Gilead in all its oppressive grimness. Offred’s voice is compelling, and her narrative grips the reader, making one feel the weight of her desperation, loneliness, and the glimmer of rebellion that she clings to.

The Handmaid’s Tale Rating

My rating: 9/10. The novel is a superbly crafted piece of literature that leaves a lasting impact. It’s haunting, poignant, and thought-provoking, the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve put it down.

About the Author: Margaret Atwood

Her personal life saw her married to American writer Jim Polk, and later, novelist Graeme Gibson, with whom she had a daughter. They were together until Gibson’s death in 2019, an event that deeply affected Atwood and influenced her subsequent works.

Where to Read The Handmaid’s Tale

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Feminist literature at its most searing and urgent

• Publisher: McClelland and Stewart
• Genre:  Dystopian Science Fiction
• First Publication: 1985
• Language:  English
• Series: The Handmaid’s Tale, Book #1
• Setting: Republic of Gilead, The United States of America, Bangor, Maine (United States)
• Characters: The Commander, Offred, Serena Joy, Ofglen, Moira, Aunt Lydia, Nick, Janine

Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a chilling, dystopian masterpiece that has only grown more frighteningly relevant with time. Set in the totalitarian theocracy of Gilead where women are stripped of autonomy, Atwood spins a haunting yet grounded vision of gender subjugation taken to its nightmarish extreme. Through the eyes of the defiant handmaid Offred, readers are immersed into this troubling alternate reality where fertile women are ruthlessly conscripted into reproductive servitude at the whims of the patriarchal elite. Both a searing work of speculative fiction and an urgent contemporary allegory, the novel’s piercing insights into oppression, resilience, and reclaiming one’s bodily autonomy burn with prescient intensity.

The narrative centers around Offred, a handmaid assigned to bear children for a high-ranking Gileadian Commander and his infertile wife. In this society where an environmental crisis has rendered most women sterile, handmaids represent a brutally repressed class of subjugated wombs. Offred recounts her indoctrination into this caste alongside her fellow handmaids, all forcibly separated from their previous lives and personal identities.

Woven throughout her present-day existence of ritual dehumanization and state-sanctioned sexual servitude, Atwood periodically flashes back to Offred’s old life as an independent woman with a husband, child, and career before Gilead’s ascent to power. These interstitial slivers of her lost freedoms throw the full extent of the regime’s human rights atrocities into stark relief.

Beyond just chronicling Offred’s individual plight, the novel methodically builds an unnerving procedural portrait of Gilead itself—its skewed religious dogma, institutionalized misogyny, environmental cataclysm underpinnings, and brutal enforcement mechanisms deployed by the dreaded Eyes secret police. A lurking resistance to the totalitarian order simmers as Offred starts discretely pushing boundaries, creating enigmatic mysteries and stakes beyond mere survival.

Main Character Analysis:

In Offred, Atwood crafts an uncommonly complex and enduring heroine of modern literature. On one level, she presents as an innately empathetic everywoman figure whose ordinary existence was upended by extraordinary totalitarian forces beyond her control. Her poignant internal musings express familiar laments over society’s degradations and the human psyche’s staggering reservoirs of resilience when stripped of basic rights.

Yet Offred simultaneously emerges as a fiercely individualistic voice of courageous defiance in the face of dehumanization. Atwood embeds her protagonist with streaks of subversive wit, cunning self-preservation, and surreptitious rebelliousness that reverberate as both psychologically authentic portraits of oppression’s aftermath and symbolic calls for radical feminist resistance. Whether flashing from moments of fragility to emboldened acts of reclaiming her identity, Offred radiates a vivid interiority grounded in a profound, hard-won understanding of power’s perpetual abuses.

Just as crucially, Atwood humanizes even Offred’s oppressors and masters in Gilead as multi-dimensional figures rather than flattening them into caricatures. The indomitable Aunt Lydia, the soul-weary but conflicted Commander, and the fearsome Eyes secret police enforcers add textured shades of gray into the heroine’s plight. It underscores that living, breathing human beings perpetuate even the most monstrous systems.

Writing Style:

Atwood’s masterful command of voice and perspective are on full display throughout. By filtering the haunting narrative solely through Offred’s first person recollections and introspections, the author imbues her disquietingly visceral prose with piercing immediacy. We marinate not just in the mundane indignities of her regimented existence, but the raw reflections of a soul grappling to maintain individuality amidst totalitarian subjugation.

Moments of dark, gallows humor and veiled double meanings compound the novel’s searing irony while Atwood’s naturalistic, sparingly deployed descriptions evoke dystopia rendered through inescapably plausible textures. Chilling, psychologically smothering, and utterly transportive.

While operating as a gripping, imaginative work of speculative fiction on its surface, “The Handmaid’s Tale” proves most resonant and impactful through Atwood’s unflinching interrogation of society’s darkest systemic misogynies and their most nightmarish possible perpetuations. The regressive theocracy of Gilead itself embodies a searing allegory for the toxic masculinity, gender subjugation, environmental destruction, and authoritarian dogma festering like cancers within seemingly progressive nations before metastasizing into full-fledged fascism.

More broadly, Atwood raises disturbing inquiries into the human species’ eternal proclivity for consolidating power and codifying control over oppressed groups under the guise of restoring moral order or upholding traditional values. Offred’s plight and Gilead’s stark world-building illustrate how oppression’s insidious mechanics start taking root through gradual normalization, dehumanizing rhetoric, and cloaking egregious violations behind bureaucratic banality.

Just as crucially, Atwood locates rays of hope and radical feminist empowerment in Offred’s surreptitious acts of defiance and survival through preserving identity, taking reproductive autonomy, and nurturing clandestine resistances. Even in the most draconian of totalitarian landscapes, the novel posits that pockets of transcendent resilience and self-determination will gestate through the cracks.

What People Are Saying:

Since its initial publication in 1985, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has only grown in stature to become one of the most acclaimed and essential literary works of the 20th century. Lavished with critical superlatives praising its chilling atmosphere, profound socio-political resonances, Atwood’s masterful use of language, and Offred’s iconic interiority, the novel stands as a certifiable modern classic.

Its continued newfound relevance and timeliness amid assaults on reproductive rights have only lent it further prescient urgency in recent years. Both as landmark work of speculative fiction and vital cautionary tale, it endures as a monumental reading experience.

My Personal Take:

With dystopian fiction seemingly more inescapable than ever on our current nightmarish media landscape, I initially approached Margaret Atwood’s seminal “The Handmaid’s Tale” with a degree of self-conscious hesitation. I feared being subjected to yet another heavy-handed “imagine a world where fascism but make it a patriarchal theocracy” slog of a narrative delivered with all the subtlety of a high school polemic against gender oppression’s dangers.

But from those opening disquieting vignettes of Offred’s strange ritualized daily existences as a handmaid amid Gilead’s surreal civilities, I found myself progressively under the novel’s melancholic yet utterly engrossing spell. Atwood’s intricate world-building and scathing satirical observations about how violently repressive systems can congeal before one’s very eyes hit with such sobering force. I was hooked, following along with equal parts dread and morbid fascination as Offred reminisced on the incremental normalization that led to full-blown totalitarian nightmare unfolding.

And yet what I was perhaps woefully underprepared for was just how cathartic and boldly empowering the character’s own gradual transformation from institutionally-gaslit woman into defiant vessel of self-determination and reclaimed sexual autonomy would ultimately feel. Sure, the sequences of dehumanizing servitude she and her fellow handmaids are subjected to land as such lurid potent trigger warnings for anyone who has navigated sexual abuse or violence. But with exquisitely calibrated pacing and fiercely emotional intelligence, Atwood channels the maelstrom of anger, self-preservation instincts, and radical resilience Offred gradually summons in fighting back against her oppressors.

By the final chapters, I was indelibly moved by how cohesively Atwood synthesizes overarching allegory about humanity’s proclivity for chilling evil when systems remain unchecked with deep wells of feminist interiority – all filtered through the gripping yet disarmingly intimate account of one woman whose indomitable spirit and hard-won self-knowledge refuses, against all odds, to ever be extinguished. Even when enveloped by the story’s claustrophobic atmosphere and harrowing depiction of subjugation norms, I felt almost spiritually buoyed by the character embodying such transcendent feminine agency.

Wrapping It Up:

Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a towering work of imaginative literature whose enduring impact has only intensified in our current era of encroaching authoritarianism and human rights erosions. By rendering the dystopian landscape of Gilead in such plausible yet grotesquely visceral terms, she has crafted a gripping yet substantive cultural reckoning with patriarchal oppression’s most nightmarish perpetuations if left to metastasize unchecked.

Yet it’s Atwood’s staggeringly intimate and empathetic channeling of trauma’s aftermath, resilience’s infinite wellsprings, and feminine defiance’s enduring vigor where the novel scorches deepest onto the soul. As at once searing speculative fiction, radical feminist cri de coeur, and harbinger of real-world urgency, “The Handmaid’s Tale” stands imposing as an eternal call to remain vigilant over human rights’ fragility when indifference breeds complacency. A towering literary masterwork.

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Book Review

The landscape:

Dystopian novels are not new. Readers, at least for a century, have been reading, appreciating and enjoying dystopian literature. William Golding and Orwell are, perhaps, the most celebrated and critically acclaimed novelists who produced the two greatest dystopian novels among many works by many other novelists. However, in recent years, especially in the late 20th century and the 21st century, a new torrent of dystopian literature has annunciated on the path of the literary abyss that leads to infinity. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Hunger Games, The Road, and Station Eleven are some of the leading titles when we discuss contemporary dystopian literature by contemporary novelists. In this book review article, I will discuss The Handmaid’s Tale by seasoned novelist and Booker Award winner, twice. If you are already a fan, you may find some otherwise aspects in this review. If you are not one of the millions who have read the book yet, you will find many reasons to do so. Let’s begin.

A brief summary of The Handmaid’s Tale:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood takes the readers into a dystopian world in a proximate future, wherein the totalitarian regime known as Gilead rises, usurping the (mighty?) governance of the United States. Imbued with haunting prose and loaded with many speculative scenarios that might disturb many readers, the narrative centres upon Offred, a Handmaid, her purpose rendered singularly to the bearing of offspring for the privileged echelons. Within this pernicious, hard-to-survive, tormenting and bizarre world, women’s rights are methodically dismantled, while Offred, confined to a scrutinized existence, witnesses the erosion of her identity, relegated to a mere vessel of procreation. Amidst this oppressive panorama, Atwood deftly navigates the thematic realms of subjugation, dominance, and the relentless quest for self-determination, evoking a disquieting scene that attests to the merciless curbing of individual liberties and self-sovereignty. The novel is full of scenes and instances that are horrendous, cruel and unimaginable. However, with her skilful writing, she has been able to offer timeless prose fiction.

The characters:

Margaret Atwood’s masterpiece presents an array of characters whose roles surely transcend their individual narratives. And, in doing so, these characters add profound insights into the multifaceted dimensions of Gilead’s dystopian society. At the centre of this harrowing tale is Offred, the protagonist and also the narrator, whose very existence exemplifies the suffering endured by the Handmaids. Subjected to living like merely as a vessel responsible for reproducing kids, Offred serves as a poignant symbol, encapsulating the depths of despair and the desperate struggle for autonomy within the speculative tyrannical world. Through her perceptive lens, readers bear witness to the unforgiving brutality that pervades Gilead, as well as her own internal battle to assert her agency and reclaim her shattered identity. Offred’s character makes the dystopian world appear crueller. The antagonist, many may surmise, the Commander, is a lofty official whose presence epitomizes the embodiment of power. In the role of Commander lies the cruel intention of the totalitarian regime of Gilead. However, once the novel develops, beneath the imposing demeanour of the Commander’s existence, lies a confused, contradicting, and cracked glass that cannot hold on to anything that is subjected in the front. The Commander symbolises the regime sans morality which is on the verge of extinction of the humane qualities. Serena Joy and Moira are two contrasting characters that readers will notice have been constructed by the skilful novelist in a very subtle manner. Moira doesn’t succumb to the regime, even after being subjugated and harassed, tortured and mentally broken by another venomous character symbolising the women’s complicity, Aunt Lydia. Serena Joy, the wife of the Commander, unlike her name, enjoys nothing joyful in her life. She accepts her fate and tries to remain within the suffocating boundaries of Gilead’s authoritative world. Moira (and a few other – minor and a little more than minor characters – symbolise hope, friendship and resistance against the regime. Like every dystopian drama, there is a character who cannot be predicted unless you finish reading the novel – Nick, the chauffeur of the Commander. Luke serves as hope and respite for Offred, on many occasions, the husband of the protagonist who may only visit her in dreams… The characters are nicely designed, well-developed and play their assigned roles quite well. However, the character of the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, might have had more attempts to salvage their purpose (if they had any).

Aspects, Perspectives & Critical Observations:

Though there are many things that one can derive after reading this novel. However, at its core, the novel offers a scathing critique of patriarchal power structures, many may argue. At the end of the day, ultimately, things come down to power. The one who has power can control the world. And the same happens in Gilead’s regime. Exploration of gender oppression within a totalitarian society can also be one aspect if you look at everything… and it certainly is one major episode on which most of the weight of the plot rests throughout the novel. The women are merely reproduction vessels and it certainly does not tell everything about the oppressive cycles women go through and the life-ending punishment if anyone tries to deviate from the ascribed course. Atwood deliberates on many issues of power abuse and the fears of a totalitarian society through the lens of Offred, the narrator and the unfortunate protagonist of the novel. Atwood underlines the insidious nature of power and control, interrogating the ways in which oppressive regimes exploit religion, ideology, and state apparatuses to perpetuate their dominance. Very much aligned with the present regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban and its archaic oppressive rules! The language employed by the novelist flows freely, almost like it does in poetry.

“The stains on the mattress. Like dried flower petals. Not recent. Old love; there’s no other kind of love in this room now.”

Overall, the novel published in 1985, still offers a variety of interpretational opportunities to the readers with critical sight. The first-person narrative wonderfully aligns with the harrowing scenarios the novel explores. Poetic language fittingly justifies the hopelessness, sorrows, loneliness and the unending darkness of the night… in the eternal wait of the first rays of the sun touching the cracking lands of justice.

Criticism & Claims:

Well, just to start and ask the obvious (that many of my American friends today would love to ask Atwood) – what is the role of Trans people in Gilead’s world? Where are they? Why does the author not think them appropriate enough to show either as oppressed or the oppressors? Criticism at different times has varied measures and benchmarks. And it is obvious because Moira has been depicted as a lesbian character. The next that many critics have argued – the women of colour (or people of colour) have almost negligible roles in this novel. That might be an ask from the author. Now, on a serious note, I enjoyed reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood. Nevertheless, I assume that many modern readers, in their teens or youth, may not enjoy the novel the same way that critics or grown-ups may do. This is because the novel is too pessimistic and almost nothing other than eternal torment and suffering, inside and outside the human body, takes place! Just for optics, let’s discuss the novel by celebrity American novelist Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games. The novel is woven in a way that women have active roles to play rather than sitting ducks and letting things happen to them. Does Atwood think women are prone to subjugation? It’s a fair question to ask. And the language that she has used in the novel and the narrative style, overall, is too poetic at times. Prose, it is called for a reason. And, reading when the novel by Atwood, friends of mine, bemused was I. See, you, too:

“Moira and I, with paper bags filled with water. Water bombs, they were called. Leaning out my dorm window, dropping them on the heads of the boys below.”

While, at times, the style is enjoyable and fitting to the predicament of Offred, it becomes too poetic to digest assuming the readers know what might have been transpiring in the background – Gilead hanging a few women because they denied bearing children. How could someone be so poetic at that time? The narrative betrays the plot on many occasions. And eventually, once you are totally detached from the linguistic shenanigans that Atwood keeps on with, you may find the novel superficial and out of place.

Overall, the novel has become a classic… just because many say so. If you want to make your own decision about reading it or just skip the waiting line, I would suggest reading a free preview on Amazon Kindle. I won’t suggest a hard yes or no. It is enjoyable to read and also a little too much to cope with at times. So, if you love poetic language and a serious plot pointing fingers at serious issues around us, you may enjoy it. However, if you are no fan of poetic flow in the prose, you may well ignore it.

Click here to get a copy from Amazon India

Review by Ashish for ReadByCritics

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood – Book Review

• ReadByCritics Rating

Imagination, speculation, and a tale that is sublime… significant symbolism to indicate the horrors of a totalitarian regime where women are no more than breeding pots. However, at times, the overly poetic narrative betrays the horrors of the plot. Things are sublime in one minute and superficial in another! The co-ordination may not be ideal for modern readers, while the ancients will still enjoy a few hours of thrilling and bone-chilling pain!

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About the Book

An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” ( The New York Times ). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss.

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning and a tour de force of narrative suspense, THE HANDMAID'S TALE is a modern classic.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

• Publication Date: March 16, 1998
• Genres: Science Fiction
• Paperback: 311 pages
• Publisher: Anchor
• ISBN-10: 038549081X
• ISBN-13: 9780385490818

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Book Review

Oct 1, 2019 | Book Reviews , Books

In the dystopian future of The Handmaid’s Tale , the Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred’s nor that of the two men on whom her future hangs.

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit and astute perception.

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale Author: Margaret Atwood Publisher: Penguin Random House Date: 1985 Genre: Classics, Sci-Fi/Dystopian

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: Book Review

I’ll admit, The Handmaid’s Tale is one of those books that has completely passed me by until recently. Never mind that fact that is has over a million Goodreads ratings , has sold millions of copies, and has a hit TV show; it still hasn’t ever really entered my field of vision, or indeed, my TBR pile.

But when my local Waterstones announced they were starting a book club and the first book would be The Handmaid’s Tale in anticipation of its sequel, The Testaments , being released later that month, I finally picked up a copy. And as soon as I read it, my first dominant thought was: why the hell haven’t I read this before?!

The Story of The Handmaid’s Tale

Set in a miserable dystopian world in 21st century America, The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Offred, a handmaid who belongs to the family of a commander and his wife, an ex-celebrity who now spends all her days sitting silently in her home, being waited on hand and foot. We learn pretty quickly that handmaids like Offred have one purpose: to bring their Commander’s children into the world, replacing the job of the Wives, who were made infertile by – I assume – radiation sickness. That’s all the handmaids are there for: child-bearing objects that fulfil the only role their superior women can’t.

The story and the world are so rich in details, and every page leaves you wanting to find out more: about Gilead, the mysterious place in which they live; about the roles that society has seemingly been divided into; and about Offred, who dwells on her past and seems desperate to escape the confines of this dismal world where women are to be seen, not heard, and whose primary purpose is to bear children but not, under circumstances, feel any desire towards the people they must procreate with. (If you were in her Offred’s position, wouldn’t you want to get the hell out of there, too?)

The Writing Style

One of the first things I noticed was the incredibly poetic language Atwood uses throughout, and you can tell she’s written her fair share of poetry. She has a unique way of describing things that makes you hang onto every single word. Take, for instance, this part on the very first page, where Offred is simply describing an old gymnasium:

“Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light.”

As well as the poetic language, Atwood describes things in such a way that breaks the modern “rules” that state a writer shouldn’t describe anything in the scene that’s not imperative the action. However, Atwood does it so well that it never feels like an ‘info dump’ (ahem, I’m looking at you, Ready Player One ).

For example, in Offred’s bedroom, from just one page of description, we know that there is: a chair, a table, a lamp; on the ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it, a blank space, plastered over like something has been removed (so there’s nothing to tie a rope to); the sunlight coming through a partly-open window with white curtains and a window seat containing a little cushion; a highly polished floor made of narrow boards; an oval rag rug; a picture of blue watercolour irises on the wall (framed with no glass); and a single bed, medium-hard, with a flocked white spread.

Yep – all of that, we get from one single page.

Usually, I’d wonder why the author needed to go into so much detail. However, in this case, it’s a perfect way to realise the monotonous nature of Offred’s life. She sees this room all day, every day, and by now, she has studied every crack and every fleck of dust. She even repeats some of her descriptions later on to further emphasis the monotony. You can see her mind slowly start to unravel as she’s stuck in the same endless cycle of being practically part of the furniture.

The Focus on Women Reclaiming Their Power

I knew before reading this book that it centres heavily on oppression of women and their fight to get back some power. What I didn’t realise is how many profound statements Atwood makes throughout the book that genuinely made me say “oh my god,” and immediately reach for a highlighter so I can remember them forever. For instance, there’s a paragraph at the beginning of chapter thirteen in which Offred is describing paintings depicting women that men see as erotic:

“Dozens of paintings of harems, fat women lolling in divans … Studies of sedentary flesh, painted by men who’d never been there. These pictures were meant to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation, about waiting, about objects not in use . They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men. ”

I honestly think that one paragraph right there encapsulates the whole purpose of women in Gilead. Just one sentence – the one at the end – is enough to give you chills, and realise just how sad it is that it’s still very much true.

Closing Thoughts

If you want a book full of heart-racing action, this probably isn’t for you. The majority of the book (until the pace suddenly picks up in the last third) is slow, but its slow pace is necessary – it takes an in-depth look at Gilead and the people – especially the women – who live within its boundaries.

Unlike a lot of contemporary dystopian tales that pack in as much action and heroism as they can squeeze into a few hundred pages, The Handmaid’s Tale is more of a sociological perception of the world we live in, or more so, the world we could live in. It looks at the gender divide and offers surprisingly accurate insights into how the world (sadly) works, despite the fact that it’s set in a dystopian future. Okay, it’s an exaggerated view – but without the extreme sci-fi-like elements, the values that Atwood explores are terrifyingly close to reality.

I probably have so much more I can say about this book, but without it turning into a whole thesis, I’ll just end by saying this: it’s not often that a book makes me think deeply about society and how things could be if the patriarchy was taken to the extreme lengths we see in this book.

The Handmaid’s Tale grabbed me at the beginning and didn’t let me go – and maybe it never will. And I’m completely okay with that.

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February 9, 1986 Book Review By MARY McCARTHY THE HANDMAID'S TALE By Margaret Atwood. urely the essential element of a cautionary tale is recognition. Surprised recognition, even, enough to administer a shock. We are warned, by seeing our present selves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue. That was the effect of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' with its scary dating, not 40 years ahead, maybe also of ''Brave New World'' and, to some extent, of ''A Clockwork Orange.'' It is an effect, for me, almost strikingly missing from Margaret Atwood's very readable book ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' offered by the publisher as a ''forecast'' of what we may have in store for us in the quite near future. A standoff will have been achieved vis-a-vis the Russians, and our own country will be ruled by right-wingers and religious fundamentalists, with males restored to the traditional role of warriors and us females to our ''place'' - which, however, will have undergone subdivision into separate sectors, of wives, breeders, servants and so forth, each clothed in the appropriate uniform. A fresh postfeminist approach to future shock, you might say. Yet the book just does not tell me what there is in our present mores that I ought to watch out for unless I want the United States of America to become a slave state something like the Republic of Gilead whose outlines are here sketched out. Another reader, less peculiar than myself, might confess to a touch of apathy regarding credit cards (instruments of social control), but I have always been firmly against them and will go to almost any length to avoid using one. Yet I can admit to a general failure to extrapolate sufficiently from the 1986 scene. Still, even when I try, in the light of these palely lurid pages, to take the Moral Majority seriously, no shiver of recognition ensues. I just can't see the intolerance of the far right, presently directed not only at abortion clinics and homosexuals but also at high school libraries and small-town schoolteachers, as leading to a super-biblical puritanism by which procreation will be insisted on and reading of any kind banned. Nor, on the other hand, do I fear our ''excesses'' of tolerance as pointing in the same direction. Liberality toward pornography in the courts, the media, on the newstands may make an anxious parent feel disgusted with liberalism, but can it really move a nation to install a theocracy strictly based on the Book of Genesis? Where are the signs of it? A backlash is only a backlash, that is, a reaction. Fear of a backlash, in politics, ought not to deter anybody from adhering to principle; that would be only another form of cowardice. The same for ''excessive'' feminism, which here seems to bear some responsibility for Gilead, to be one of its causes. The kind of doctrinaire feminism likely to produce a backlash is exemplified in the narrator's absurd mother, whom we first hear of at a book-burning in the old, pre-Gilead time - the ''right'' kind of book-burning, naturally, merely a pyre of pornographic magazines: ''Mother,'' thinks the narrator in what has become the present, ''You wanted a women's culture. Well, now there is one.'' The wrong kind, of course. The new world of ''The Handmaid's Tale'' is a woman's world, even though governed, seemingly, and policed by men. Its ethos is entirely domestic, its female population is divided into classes based on household functions, each class clad in a separate color that instantly identifies the wearer - dull green for the Marthas (houseworkers); blue for the Wives; red, blue and green stripes for the Econowives (working class); red for the Handmaids (whose function is to bear children to the head of the household, like Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid in Genesis, but who also, in their long red gowns and white wimple-like headgear, have something of the aura of a temple harlot); brown for the Aunts (a thought-control force, part-governess, part-reform-school matron). The head of the household - whose first name the handmaid takes, adding the word ''of'' to show possession -''Offred,'' ''Ofwarren'' - is known as the Commander. It is his duty to inseminate his assigned partner, who lies on the spread thighs of his wife. THE Commanders, presumably, are the high bureaucracy of the regime, yet they are oddly powerless in the household, having no part in the administration of discipline and ceremonially subject to their aging wives. We are not told how and in what sense they govern. The oversight perhaps accounts for the thin credibility of the parable. That they lack freedom, are locked into their own rigid system, is only to be expected. It is no surprise that our narrator's commander, Fred, like a typical bourgeois husband of former times, does a bit of cheating, getting Offred to play Scrabble with him secretly at night (where books are forbidden, word games become wicked), look at his hoard of old fashion magazines (forbidden), kiss him, even go dressed in glitter and feathers to an underground bunny-type nightclub staffed by fallen women, mostly lesbian. Nor is it a surprise that his wife catches him/ them. Plusca change, plus c'est la meme chose. But that cannot be the motto for a cautionary tale, whose job is to warn of change. Infertility is the big problem of the new world and the reason for many of its institutions. A dramatically lowered birth rate, which brought on the fall of the old order, had a plurality of causes, we are told. ''The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules.'' During an earthquake, atomic power plants exploded (''nobody's fault''). A mutant strain of syphilis appeared, and of course AIDS. Then there were women who refused to breed, as an antinuclear protest, and had their tubes tied up. Anyway, infertility, despite the radical measures of the new regime, has not yet been overcome. Not only are there barren women (mostly shipped to the colonies) but a worrying sterility in men, especially among the powerful who ought to be reproducing themselves. The amusing suggestion is made, late in the book at a symposium (June 25, 2195) of Gileadean historical studies, that sterility among the Commanders may have been the result of an earlier gene-splicing experiment with mumps that produced a virus intended for insertion into the supply of caviar used by top officials in Moscow. ''The Handmaid's Tale'' contains several such touches of deft sardonic humor - for example, the television news program showing clouds of smoke over what was formerly the city of Detroit: we hear the anchorman explain that resettlement of the children of Ham in National Homeland One (the wilds of North Dakota) is continuing on schedule - 3,000 have arrived that week. And yet what is lacking, I think - what constitutes a fundamental disappointment after a promising start - is the destructive force of satire. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' had it, ''A Clockwork Orange'' had it, even ''Brave New World'' had it, though Huxley was rather short on savagery. If ''The Handmaid's Tale'' doesn't scare one, doesn't wake one up, it must be because it has no satiric bite. The author has carefully drawn her projections from current trends. As she has said elsewhere, there is nothing here that has not been anticipated in the United States of America that we already know. Perhaps that is the trouble: the projections are too neatly penciled in. The details, including a Wall (as in Berlin, but also, as in the Middle Ages, a place where executed malefactors are displayed), all raise their hands announcing themselves present. At the same time, the Republic of Gilead itself, whatever in it that is not a projection, is insufficiently imagined. The Aunts are a good invention, though I cannot picture them as belonging to any future; unlike Big Brother, they are more part of the past - our schoolteachers. But the most conspicuous lack, in comparison with the classics of the fearsome-future genre, is the inability to imagine a language to match the changed face of common life. No newspeak. And nothing like the linguistic tour de force of ''A Clockwork Orange'' - the brutal melting-down of current English and Slavic words that in itself tells the story of the dread new breed. The writing of ''The Handmaid's Tale'' is undistinguished in a double sense, ordinary if not glaringly so, but also indistinguishable from what one supposes would be Margaret Atwood's normal way of expressing herself in the circumstances. This is a serious defect, unpardonable maybe for the genre: a future that has no language invented for it lacks a personality. That must be why, collectively, it is powerless to scare. ONE could argue that the very tameness of the narrator-heroine's style is intended as characterization. It is true that a leading trait of Offred (we are never told her own, real name in so many words, but my textual detective work says it is June) has always been an unwillingness to stick her neck out, and perhaps we are meant to conclude that such unwillingness, multiplied, may be fatal to a free society. After the takeover, she tells us, there were some protests and demonstrations. ''I didn't go on any of the marches. Luke [ her husband ] said it would be futile, and I had to think about them, my family, him and her [ their little girl ] .'' Famous last words. But, though this may characterize an attitude - fairly widespread - it does not constitute a particular kind of speech. And there are many poetical passages, for example (chosen at random): ''All things white and circular. I wait for the day to unroll, for the earth to turn, according to the round face of the implacable clock.'' Which is surely oldspeak, wouldn't you say? Characterization in general is weak in ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' which maybe makes it a poet's novel. I cannot tell Luke, the husband, from Nick, the chauffeur-lover who may be an Eye (government spy) and/ or belong to the ''Mayday'' underground. Nor is the Commander strongly drawn. Again, the Aunts are best. How sad for postfeminists that one does not feel for Offred-June half as much as one did for Winston Smith, no hero either but at any rate imaginable. It seems harsh to say again of a poet's novel - so hard to put down, in part so striking - that it lacks imagination, but that, I fear, is the problem. Mary McCarthy, whose latest book is ''Occasional Prose,'' will assume the new Stevenson Chair of Literature at Bard College beginning this fall. The Lady Was Not for Hanging The dedication of ''The Handmaid's Tale'' -''For Mary Webster and Perry Miller'' - holds clues to the novel's roots in our Puritan past. ''Mary Webster was an ancestor of mine who was hanged for a witch in Connecticut,'' Margaret Atwood explained. ''But she didn't die. They hadn't invented the drop yet'' - the part of the platform that falls away - ''so they hanged her but she lived.'' The author's studies in early American history under the Harvard scholar Perry Miller also informs her theme of religious intolerance. ''You often hear in North America, 'It can't happen here,' but it happened quite early on. The Puritans banished people who didn't agree with them, so we would be rather smug to assume that the seeds are not there. That's why I set the book in Cambridge,'' said the Canadian author, who lives in Toronto and has traveled widely in the United States. Like many of her fictional women (she has written poems, essays and novels, notably the feminist classic ''Surfacing''), she is wryly unpolemical. ''Feminist activity is not causal, it's symptomatic,'' she said of the book's antiwoman society. ''Any power structure will co-opt the views of its opponents, to sugarcoat the pill. The regime gives women some things the women's movement says they want -control over birth, no pornography - but there's a price. If you were going to put in a repressive regime, how would you do it?'' Despite the novel's projections from current events, Margaret Atwood resists calling her book a warning. ''I do not have a political agenda of that kind. The book won't tell you who to vote for,'' she said. But she advises, ''Anyone who wants power will try to manipulate you by appealing to your desires and fears, and sometimes your best instincts. Women have to be a little cautious about that kind of appeal to them. What are we being asked to give up?'' - Caryn James Return to the Books Home Page

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The Best Fiction Books » Contemporary Fiction

The handmaid's tale, by margaret atwood.

Published in 1986,  The Handmaid’s Tale is a haunting epistolary novel narrated by Offred, a woman living in a future America where environmental and societal breakdown have led to the establishment of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. In Gilead, women have been stripped of their fundamental rights and reduced to their reproductive potential. Lesbians and other ‘gender outlaws’ are executed, as are doctors who conduct abortions.

The Handmaid’s Tale was recognised as a modern classic and first adapted into a film in 1990. It reappeared in the headlines (and the bestseller lists) in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s US electoral victory, after which time the handmaid’s bonnet became an icon of the feminist protest movement. More recently it was adapted as a multi-Emmy Award-winning television series starring Elisabeth Moss, who also narrates the audiobook of The Handmaid’s Tale .

The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale is  The Testaments, set 15 years later.

Recommendations from our site

“Atwood takes all the hard information about gender inequality that she sees around her and then turns it up a few notches.” Read more...

The best books on Alternative Futures

Catherine Mayer , Politician

The Handmaid’s Tale  was adapted as a multi-Emmy Award-winning television series starring Elisabeth Moss, who also narrates the audiobook .

Narrators: Elisabeth Moss, Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd

Length: 11 hours and 22 minutes

Great Actors Read Great Books

The book, according to the author

The Handmaid’s Tale has not been out of print since it was first published, back in 1985. It has sold millions of copies worldwide and has appeared in a bewildering number of translations and editions. It has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women’s bodies and reproductive functions: “Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Here comes The Handmaid’s Tale” have become familiar phrases… The book came out in the UK in February of 1986, and in the United States at the same time. In the UK, which had had its Oliver Cromwell moment some centuries ago and was in no mood to repeat it, the reaction was along the lines of, Jolly good yarn. In the United States, however…it was more likely to be, How long have we got?

Margaret Atwood

When it debuted in 1985, Atwood even took newspaper clips to her interviews about the book to show her plot points’ real-life antecedents. The book mirrored the United States’ embrace of conservatism, as evidenced by the election of Ronald Reagan as president, as well as the increasing power of the Christian right and its powerful lobbying organisations the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition – not to mention the rise of televangelism.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, BBC Culture. 25 April 2018.

The world of 1984 has never existed. Neither has the one of Brave New World, or A Clockwork Orange, or any of the other dystopias that are supposed to tell us about the human condition. But all you have to do to recreate The Handmaid’s Tale is go back a few hundred years or move to the right country. A paranoid, in this case, is just a woman in possession of all the facts.

Adi Robertson, The Verge. 9 Nov 2016

The new world of ”The Handmaid’s Tale” is a woman’s world, even though governed, seemingly, and policed by men. Its ethos is entirely domestic, its female population is divided into classes based on household functions, each class clad in a separate color that instantly identifies the wearer – dull green for the Marthas (houseworkers); blue for the Wives; red, blue and green stripes for the Econowives (working class); red for the Handmaids (whose function is to bear children to the head of the household, like Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid in Genesis, but who also, in their long red gowns and white wimple-like headgear, have something of the aura of a temple harlot); brown for the Aunts (a thought-control force, part-governess, part-reform-school matron). The head of the household – whose first name the handmaid takes, adding the word ”of” to show possession -”Offred,” ”Ofwarren” – is known as the Commander. It is his duty to inseminate his assigned partner, who lies on the spread thighs of his wife.

Mary McCarthy, reviewing the first edition in The New York Times, 9 February 1986.

Other books by Margaret Atwood

The testaments: a novel by margaret atwood, the penelopiad by margaret atwood, alias grace by margaret atwood, angel catbird by johnnie christmas, margaret atwood & tamra bonvillain, cat's eye by margaret atwood, oryx and crake by margaret atwood, more books like the handmaid's tale.

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The latest book reviews and book news, the handmaid’s tale book review.

The Handmaid's Tale book review

One of the biggest and most controversial books in the world is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The novel tackles difficult topics head on and has stayed in the media mainstream for decades. Keep reading to find out why this novel is a must read!

Currently, The Handmaid’s Tale has a show airing of the same name that has been critically-acclaimed. Atwood has written a novel that has broken boundaries and has led to the novel being one of the most censored books in the world . Once you read a description of the plot , you will get an idea why. 

The Handmaid’s Tale Summary

The President of the United States is killed in a staged attack as well as most of Congress. The ones behind the attack are a radical political group that call themselves the “Sons of Jacob” and start a revolution. This group believes that judicial laws of the Old Testament should be used to govern modern society.

The group suspends the United States Constitution and newspapers are censored. They rename the United States of America to the Republic of Gilead and change it to a military dictatorship. 

The new regime changes the laws using the Old Testament as a guide and restructure the social classes. In this new structure, women have become the lowest-ranking class and cannot own money, property, or read and write. And they lose the right over their own reproductive functions. 

The story is told in first person by Offred, a fertile woman that is assigned the title Handmaid. Her job is to produce children for the Commanders, the ruling class of men in Gilead. She undergoes trainer with other women to become a handmaid. 

Offred shares her story of how she was treated and what her job as a handmaid led to and how she ended up joining the resistance to fight back against the ruling class. 

The novel tackles heavy subjects and does it flawlessly. It reminds me of 1984 and as reproductive rights are restricted in this day and age, it is as relevant as ever. As a society, we are always a few steps from being in a state of chaos and this novel captures a possibility if we ever forget what’s at stake.

I remember reading this for class and being surprised at the content of the novel. I was hooked and was amazed at Atwood’s ability to tell a story so chillingly. Schools should allow books like this to be required reading because no adult is going to think kids are “old enough to grasp the topics at hand.” It is the school’s job to educate the youth and there is no better way than this classic novel.

The novel was beloved by critics and helped Atwood be considered as a prominant writer of the 20th century. Atwood’s novel led to many online discussions and intense debates. And just like 1984, this novel is a warning of a dystopian future that may happen if we aren’t careful. Novels like these are important reminders that there are always forces in place that want to rob our freedom and control and monitor our every action.

Seeing novels like The Handmaid’s Tale stay relevant because of tv shows gives me great joy. Some books should always be part of modern society and this is one of them. Even decades later, this book is as popular as ever. I enjoyed this book a lot and recommend it to everyone who likes dystopian novels and great writing by a talented author.

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This book is indeed controversial and is a hot button for conflict. You did an awesome job summarizing and giving your opinion in a thought provoking manner. Kudos! Excellent review!

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BOOK REVIEW: The Handmaid’s Tale

June 23, 2020 by Sue Kunstmann

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Margaret Atwood, originally published by McClelland & Stewart, 1986

Reviewed by Linda Rusenovich

Who are the women in billowy red robes, looking as though they have just stepped out of an Elizabethan time machine into contemporary Washington, D.C.?  They were seen in costume protesting outside the Kavanaugh hearings and stood out at the Women’s March in their habits and white winged caps, personifying the “handmaid” character from Margaret Atwood’s  The Handmaid’s Tale  published more than 25 years ago in 1986.    

Atwood’s book imagines a future earth ravaged by pollution and disease. The Caucasian population crashes. Panicked white men take over a large portion of the United States and turn it into a patriarchy called Gilead.  They rescind the legal rights of women and minorities. The handmaids are forced to serve as surrogate wombs for the Commanders and their sterile wives. In  The Handmaid’s Tale,  a young woman known by the pseudonym “Offred” journals her existence as the handmaid of Commander Fred. 

Second-wave feminism feared that women’s gains would be eroded during the Reagan era. But while the oppression of women certainly occurs in some places around the globe, our Constitution guarantees women equal rights with men here in the United States. Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine these dystopian scenes occurring in the foreseeable future in Massachusetts, where the story is set. As Offred narrates her days interacting with the other characters, the reader gleans random facts about Gilead’s structure and history. However, so much is left unexplained that the reader has difficulty accepting the premises of the story. How could a revolution like this succeed if carried out by a small minority of the population?  Does Atwood think that all or most men would be complicit? 

Atwood links the patriarchal structure of Gilead to Judeo-Christian tradition. Her characters quote fragments of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. For example, the Commander’s household gathers weekly for Bible readings, but the Commander takes verses out of context in order to reinforce the oppressive practices of Gilead’s administrators. Offred views scriptural teachings as archaic and irrelevant. She observes: 

        It’s the usual story, the usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah.  Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth . Then comes the moldy old Rachel and Leah stuff we had drummed into us at the Center. (p. 88) 

Atwood reveals her own feminist ideals through Offred, who reflects on her losses. Before the Revolution, she had a secure job and income, an egalitarian marriage, and one child in daycare. Offred misses her female coworkers and friends, but trusts no male. Even Luke, Offred’s husband, entertained sympathy for the Revolution at first.   

This book is not for younger readers as it includes descriptions of rape and other sex scenes and contains profane language. It falls short on plot, requiring the reader to blindly accept the novel’s implausible premises. One can, however, read it to better understand the symbolism of the Handmaid for feminists.  Her message: “Sisters, beware.  Your career, family and freedom will never be truly safe from the patriarchy.” Linda Rusenovich  is a free-lance writer, who discusses political ideas with her  Great Books  group, and has spoken up for the American flag and conservative values before her local Board of Education. She recently celebrated 34 years of marriage and is the mother of four adult children.    Editor’s Note:  While  The Handmaid’s Tale  was initially published in 1986, it remains an important book today because of its resurgence in popularity since the 2016 elections. The handmaid costume itself has become a symbol of abortion rights, which was used by feminists to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as the review notes. Groups clad in handmaid’s gear have also appeared at venues outside of the nation’s capital, including the Golden Globe awards in Hollywood in 2018. A (streaming) television series based on  The Handmaid’s Tale  premiered in April of 2017 on Hulu. 

Despite numerous attempts to ban the book over the years, mostly because of its sexually explicit content and profanity, it remains required reading in some high schools and middle schools. Parents may be allowed to request an alternative, but often, they are not even aware that their children are being exposed to such brutally graphic content as rape, torture, kidnapping, and police brutality. The book’s dystopian message is that biblical Christianity is bad, and deeper even than that, it foreshadows the demise of the United States as a nation, to be replaced by totalitarianism; not exactly uplifting reading for young minds still in their formative stages.

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Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

9 comments:.

pardon me i didnt read this review..except the first 2 paragraphs. I dont want to be influenced by your review since ill be reading it sooon buuuut i promise u ill read it after i write my own. anyways thanks for sharing and i BET it DOES deserve a 5 stars rating! have a nice day! thoughtfully, Bonafide Blogger http://we-b-blogging.blogspot.com/

I'm not a fan of dystopian stories, but I didn't know this was dystopian when I bought it. I loved this book, and you're right, it stays with you. This one's on my keeper shelf.

I absolutely never knew what this books was about, and I'm ashamed to say I judged it purely based on the title. I'll definitely check it out now because I have quite the penchant for dystopian books. Great review! :)

I'm so excited ! this is my #2 to be read book ! which means, I'll probably read it within a week. Can't wait ! great review ! ^_^

I love a good thought-provoking read from time to time. Woman, do you know how incredibly dangerous you are to my TBR list? *adds book to TBR list*

This isn't my kind of read but you make it sound so interesting, deffo going to look it up, hope you girls are doing good *hugs*

I am not going to lie... This book was not for me, I stopped reading it just before "it got good" per Kelli BUT I was a freshman in college and not reading for pleasure...lYou know me Kelli, I need a good love triangle or something... lol. But I will say my mom loved the book and I know I am totally in the minority and I am okay with that :)

I had to read this book as a sophomore is high school, I liked it then and I still like it now. It rubs some people the wrong way, but I always liked dystopian novels :)

I actually studied this book in college in two seperate classes, Contemporary Women's Writing and a module I did based solely on the works of Atwood. I absolutely loved this book and it was actually one of the first dystopian books I ever read. I really love to read a book that makes you think and this is definitely one of those books. Great review :)

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Book review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

You may well have heard of the very successful TV series The Handmaid’s Tale but did you know it’s based on a very successful book by the same name, written by Margaret Atwood?

Please note that this article contains affiliate links. This means if you choose to purchase The Handmaid’s Tale via one of these links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you to support the blog. These links do not affect my final opinion of the product.

The Handmaid’s Tale tells the first-hand story of Offred, a Handmaid who lives in Gilead where women are no longer free and must survive by obeying the whims of their commanders. It’s mainly a first-hand account of her experiences under this regime and how the world treats women.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a tale of suppressed women to the extreme – it’s a hyperbolic metaphor for how women felt during the 1980s when this book was written. This message is clear and one that is pushed throughout the book through literal interpretations. For example, Offred is not allowed to read, she’s not allowed to show skin, she must go to the market once a day and buy food for her commander and their family. Most importantly, she must lay on her back once a month and give herself to the Commander for the future of the human race.

This is the life Offred is used to. However, she’s assigned to a new commander and one day he asks her to come and play Scrabbled with her and she thinks things may change.

I’ll be honest, the plot was incredibly slow, especially for the first half. There’s a lot of explaining of thoughts and opinions on the climate that Offred finds herself in. However, there’s not a lot of actual plot taking place. The whole book really suffers from a lack of actual movement and is only blessed by the fact that it’s quite short.

Characters – 3/5 

Offred is the main character in The Handmaid’s Tale . She’s the one we hear the opinion of throughout the novel and we hear of her past before the regime. However, she lacks any real personality throughout and no one else really gets enough “air time” to bring anything else to the story. Unfortunately, I feel like this book suffers from trying to get a metaphor across so much (which it does do well) that it then lacks any additional substance.

The interaction between Offred and the Commander is really the only substantial dynamic there is throughout the book and is quite an interesting one to be fair. Without giving away too many spoilers, it definitely does liven up what is otherwise a really slow-paced book and the dynamic between the pair is quite interesting. Still not enough for me to particularly like either of them.

The Handmaid’s Tale summary – 3/5

After the hype around the tv show, I was quite disappointed by The Handmaid’s Tale . The plot itself is very slow and the characters barely have any interaction with one another and so don’t have any depth. This book reminds me a lot of The Man In The High Castle – there’s a great TV show out there based on some fantastic original material but the book from which they come aren’t as fleshed out and don’t hit the potential that the television shows reach.

I’d recommend reading The Handmaid’s Tale to those who have seen the TV Show or those who love to read dystopian fiction . Just don’t expect a lot of plot and don’t expect a lot of interaction between the characters.

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Everything to Know About The Handmaid's Tale Season 6

Will June escape Gilead?

For five seasons of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale , viewers have watched with bated breath as June, Moira, Emily, Janine, Serena Joy, and Aunt Lydia have endured torture (or tortured) in the dystopian world of Gilead. While the show could be difficult and painful to watch at times, the drama became a worldwide hit, garnering Emmy and Golden Globe awards for both the series and its lead Elisabeth Moss . And with the fifth season wrapping in the fall of 2022, many fans are wondering when The Handmaid's Tale Season 6 release date will be announced, as it will be the final season in this epic storyline.

While the final season of The Handmaid's Tale is on the horizon, we don't have too many details yet — but, here we outline everything we do know so far, including who will lead Season 6, what the final season might be about, and when to expect it to premiere on Hulu.

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Elisabeth Moss and Samira Wiley, The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale latest news

According to Craig Erwich in a February 2024 interview with Deadline , The Handmaid's Tale will go into production for its final chapter this summer. (As the Disney Television Group president, Erwich oversees Hulu Originals content.) Before the writers and actors strikes of 2023, The Handmaid's Tale Season 6 was slated to begin production in 2023 and premiere in fall 2024.

In May, actress Ever Carradine was promoted to series regular for the sixth season, according to Deadline . Expect Naomi, Commander Putnam's former wife and Commander Lawrence's current wife, to have a bigger role in the final season. 

The Handmaid's Tale Season 6 release date

In January, Moss said on Jimmy Kimmel Live that The Handmaid's Tale would return in "maybe 2025." The sixth and final season of The Handmaid's Tale was announced in September 2022, just ahead of the fifth season premiering. The original plan was for Season 6 to premiere in the fall of 2024, but the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild strikes caused an overall delay. As of June 2024, production has yet to begin — however, Erwich announced that it would start over the summer and the final season would premiere in 2025. 

What will The Handmaid's Tale  Season 6 be about?

The Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale is based on the 1985 book of the same name by Margaret Atwood. The book ends without much resolution: Offred (whose real name was never revealed) is taken away in a van. Both she and the readers are unsure if she will be escaping Gilead or be captured for her forbidden relationships with the Commander and his driver Nick. The series followed the storyline of its source material closely in Season 1, but has been expanded significantly over the years — which means the show will need to end differently.

On the show, Season 5 ended with June and Serena Joy en route to Vancouver with their babies. The biggest question fans will be looking for answers to is if June will be able to truly escape Gilead once and for all.

"June is going to figure out who she is and who she's going to be for the rest of her life," Moss told Elle in November 2022 about her character's potential storylines for Season 6. She added that in the final season, "the fight is not just about one individual." However, she warns that viewers shouldn't expect a picture-perfect resolution: "I don't think we feel an obligation to tie up the entire story of Gilead," she said.

"We are ending our show on our own creative terms," showrunner Bruce Miller told EW when the Season 5 finale aired. "Do I know what happens in Season 6? Yes, I did think about the stuff that happens in Season 6 for a while."

(Of note, Miller stepped down as showrunner, as reported by Variety in March 2023. He will remain as a writer and executive producer for Season 6, but he has passed on his duties to Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang, who were previously executive producers.)

Who will be in The Handmaid's Tale Season 6?

We can only speculate about who will be in the sixth season of The Handmaid's Tale . It's likely Alexis Bledel, who played Emily (Ofglen), will not be in the final season as she left the series ahead of Season 5. Ever Carradine, who plays Naomi, was upped to series regular between seasons. We expect everyone else in the main cast to return.

The Handmaid's Tale main cast:

• Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne
• Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy Waterford
• Madeline Brewer as Janine Lindo
• Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia
• O-T Fagbenle as Luke Bankole
• Max Minghella as Commander Nick Blaine
• Samira Wiley as Moira Strand
• Bradley Whitford as Commander Joseph Lawrence
• Sam Jaeger as Mark Tuello
• Amanda Brugel  as Rita Blue
• Ever Carradine as Naomi Lawrence

Where to watch The Handmaid's Tale

Seasons 1-5 of The Handmaid's Tale  are available to stream on Hulu.

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I'm convinced these two characters will both die in the handmaid's tale season 6.

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• In the sixth season of The Handmaid's Tale , Nick and Luke are on the chopping block, with their deaths likely as part of June's story.
• Nick, who was manipulated by the Americans, may die making a noble sacrifice to protect June.
• Luke's story could highlight deadly anti-refugee sentiment in season 6, suggesting that his death, along with Nick's, is inevitable.

I can hardly believe that after nearly eight years, Hulu's Emmy-winning The Handmaid's Tale will finally come to an end with its sixth season. Based on Margaret Atwood's classic dystopian novel of the same name, The Handmaid's Tale centers on June Osborne (Elisabeth Olsen), an American woman who is abducted by the Republic of Gilead — an ultra-conservative patriarchal society that's rooted in religious ideology. In addition to stripping women of their rights and personhood, Gilead enslaves women like June as handmaids, assigning them to high-ranking families and tasking them with solving Gilead's pressing infertility problem.

Given the story at hand so far, I simply can't imagine The Handmaid's Tale season 6 having a truly happy ending. When June is taken by Gilead's soldiers, she's separated from her husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and their daughter, Hannah. Assigned to Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), June realizes that Fred is impotent — a truth June hides after becoming pregnant with the child of the Waterfords' then-driver, Nick (Max Minghella). With Luke representing the past and Nick representing a new future, June is constantly torn between her two great loves .

How & Why Nick Will Probably Die In The Handmaid's Tale Season 6

One to play the hero, nick is running out of options in gilead.

Admittedly, I'm most interested in how T he Handmaid's Tale will handle Serena Joy's story , but Hulu's flagship drama has plenty of other threads and characters' fates to wrap up too. There's no way around it: Everyone's lives will be at risk in the final season, but both Nick and Luke seem very much on the chopping block. June has lost so much and endured countless traumas throughout the show's run, and it doesn't seem like The Handmaid's Tale season 6 will relent. I think it's safe to say the series will take aim at those June loves the most .

Nick agrees to help the Americans, but winds up attacking Commander Lawrence...

Throughout season 5, Nick pushed June away because of both his wife Rose and his precarious position within Gilead. Meanwhile, the US tries to bring Nick over to their side of the conflict, using the promise of being with June as a means of manipulating his emotions. To secure June's protection, Nick agrees to help the Americans, but winds up attacking Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) and (potentially) revealing his traitorous ways. I don't see Nick having very many allies left in Gilead , making his death ahead of The Testaments pretty likely, especially because he's one to make a noble sacrifice.

The Handmaid's Tale Season 6's Actor Change Is A Big Step Forward For Gilead's Replacement

The Handmaid's Tale season 6's casting announcement has massive implications for the final outing's story, especially where a Commander is concerned.

How & Why Luke Will Probably Die In The Handmaid's Tale Season 6

In The Handmaid's Tale 's season 5 ending , Luke is taken in by Canadian authorities. After an anti-refugee Canadian citizen tries to kill June, Luke jumps in to save his wife, severely injuring June's attacker. To me, it seems like the Canadian government will make an example of Luke in season 6 . Luke's story could be used to highlight the deadly surge in anti-refugee sentiment. Either Luke or Nick dying seems inevitable, but given that The Handmaid's Tale never pulls punches, I believe both Nick and Luke — different aspects of June's life — will die by the series finale.

The Handmaid's Tale

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The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian television series based on the 1985 novel by author Margaret Atwood. The series was created by Bruce Miller and stars Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, and Yvonne Strahovski. The show follows the story of a young handmaid as she is forced to deal with a new totalitarian government that subjugates women in this dark societal twist.