1. POINT OF VIEW
1.1. The Handmaid’s Tale is told by a first-person narrator, Offred. The details of her current life are told in the present tense, while flashbacks to her earlier life are told in the past tense
2. PROTAGONIST
2.1. The protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale is the narrator, Offred. Her goal is simply to preserve her identity as a person, in the face of an oppressive regime which sees her as a walking uterus
2.2. much of the action of the novel is internal. External events happen but the real conflict arises in Offred’s head as she struggles to preserve her identity in the midst of the novel’s events
3. CHARACTERS
3.1. Offred
3.1.1. Offred belongs to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite. shows to which commander you belong, Of Fred. Offred remembers her real name but never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks to a time in which she had a daughter and a husband named Luke.
3.2. the Commander
3.2.1. The Commander is the head of the household. He often seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes finds that she likes him in spite of herself. However, we learn that the Commander was actually involved in designing and establishing Gilead.
3.3. Serena Joy
3.3.1. The Commander’s Wife, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, yet she is unhappy. Serena behaves cruelly toward the Handmaids in her household.
3.4. Moira
3.4.1. Offred’s best friend from college, Moira is a lesbian and feminist; she embodies female independence. Her defiant nature contrasts with the behavior of the other women in the novel. Rather than passively accept her fate as a Handmaid, she makes several escape attempts and finally manages to get away from the Red Center. However, she is caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira working as a prostitute in a club for the Commanders.
3.5. Nick
3.5.1. Nick is a Guardian, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commander’s home, where he works as a gardener and chauffeur. After sleeping with Offred once, they begin a sexual affair. Nick is not just a Guardian; he may work either as a member of the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police, or as a member of the underground Mayday resistance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offred’s escape from the Commander’s home, but we do not know whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the resistance.
3.6. Ofglen
3.6.1. Another Handmaid who is Offred’s shopping partner and a member of the subversive “Mayday” underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself rather than face torture and reveal the names of her co-conspirators.
3.7. Cora
3.7.1. Cora works as a servant in the Commander’s household. She belongs to the class of Marthas, infertile women who do not qualify for the high status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. She hopes that Offred will be able to conceive, because then she will have a hand in raising a child.
3.8. Janine
3.8.1. Offred knows Janine from their time at the Red Center. After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an “Unbaby”—and there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child.
3.9. Aunt Lydia
3.9.1. The Aunts are the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates. Aunt Lydia works at the “Red Center,” the re‑education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids.
3.10. Luke
3.10.1. In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to another woman, then got a divorce and became Offred’s husband. When Gilead comes to power, he attempts to escape to Canada with Offred and their daughter, but they are captured. He is separated from Offred, and the couple never see one another again.
3.11. Offred's mother
3.11.1. Offred remembers her mother in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead world—she was a single parent and a feminist activist. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead want to stamp out.
4. THEMES
4.1. Women’s bodies as political instruments
4.2. The abuse of religion; religious terms used for political purposes
5. PLOT
5.1. Normal life, husband, child and mother
5.2. Captured and sent to the Rachel and Leah re-education center
5.3. Indoctrinated into Gilead’s ideology in preparation for becoming Handmaids
5.4. Moira is brought to the Red Center
5.4.1. Moira escapes, and Offred does not know what becomes of her
5.5. Assigned to the Commander’s house
5.6. Offred’s routine:
5.6.1. Shopping trips with Ofglen
5.6.2. They visit the Wall where the bodies of rebels hang
5.6.3. Visit the doctor
5.6.4. Endure the "Ceremony"
5.7. Offred visits the doctor and he offers to have sex with her to get her pregnant, suggesting that her Commander is probably infertile
5.8. Nightly visits with her Commander, playing scrabble and reading magazines
5.9. Serena suggests that Offred has sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commander's
5.10. The Commander secretly takes her out to a club called Jezebel’s
5.10.1. Place where the Commanders secretly mingle with prostitutes
5.10.2. Offred sees Moira working there. The two women meet in a bathroom, and Offred learns that Moira was captured just before she crossed the border. She chose life in Jezebel’s over being sent to the Colonies, where most political prisoners and dangerous people are sent. After that night at Jezebel’s she never sees Moira again.
5.10.3. The Commander takes Offred upstairs and they have sex.
5.11. After Offred returns from Jezebel’s Serena tells Offred to go to Nick’s room.
5.11.1. Offred and Nick have sex.
5.11.1.1. They start having an affair without anyone’s knowledge.
5.12. All the Handmaids take part in a group execution of a supposed rapist.
5.12.1. Ofglen strikes the first blow.
5.12.2. She tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery.
5.13. Offred goes out shopping, and meets a new Ofglen.
5.13.1. She tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the secret police coming for her.
5.14. Serena has found out about Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s, and she sends her to her room, promising punishment.
5.14.1. Offred waits there, and she sees a black van from the Eyes approach.
5.14.2. Then Nick comes in and tells her that the Eyes are really Mayday members who have come to save her.
5.14.3. Offred leaves with them on her way either to prison or to freedom—she does not know which.
6. SETTING
6.1. Gilead
6.1.1. Cambridge, Massachusetts
6.2. Most of the action of the novel takes place in the home of the Commander, a high-ranking official of the Gileadean regime. To Offred, the Commander’s home is virtually a prison, where she feels watched all the time.
6.3. The Handmaid’s Tale is set some time in the near future of our own world
6.3.1. a political group called the Sons of Jacob has overthrown the U.S. government and created a new country, the Republic of Gilead, the laws are based on an extremist reading of the Old Testament
7. SYMBOLS
7.1. Harvard University
7.1.1. Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Executed bodies hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and mass executions take place in Harvard Yard. Harvard becomes a symbol of the world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.
7.2. The Handmaids’ Red Habits
7.2.1. The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is their primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth.
7.3. The Eyes
7.3.1. The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state.