journal: a contextual dystopia

author: David Ketterer

• “Gilead is based on a new right-wing, religious fundamentalism”

• “this name - suggestive of “offered” or “afraid” (Parrinder: 20) or “off-red” (a rebellious reference to her red habit) or “off-read” (in the sense of misread - Lacombe: 7) - is not her real one”

• “most of the time they play Scrabble (an illegal game since it promotes literacy)”

• “the success of Offred’s narrative depends largely on Atwood’s skilled use of indirection, irony, and understatement”

• “as the book develops, it is the female imagery of circles and curves which predominates. Even the Wall, which might be construed as a masculine symbol, forms an imprisoning circle”

• “frequently stressed is Offred’s sense of the hallway mirror as a typically dystopian watching eye”

• “the sequence of chapter titles mimes the cycle of night (death, freedom) and day (birth, imprisonment)”

• “the future Atwood describes was surely not conceived as a direct extrapolation from our present but as a pendulum swing away from our present-day feminism”

• “Atwood’s future is novel and not inherently incredible”

• “but surely one of the prime aims of Gilead is to deprive its citizens, particularly the Handmaids, of their characters”