ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE – RELIGION, RITUALS, AND SYMBOLS
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE – RELIGION, RITUALS, AND SYMBOLS

Summary/Abstract: Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel The Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, formerly the USA, a few years after a coup that has installed a totalitarian, sectarian regime under an elite group of men called Commanders. The population is controlled through fear. Torture is commonplace, spying and denunciation are encouraged, and there are frequent public executions.Society is strictly hierarchical; women are obedient, and few have roles outsides their homes. Most people are infertile, so women who have had children outside a first marriage are, after a period of indoctrination, forced to bear children for childless, high-status couples and are known as handmaids.The narrator is one of these Offred. She is in her mid-thirties and is running out of time before being sent to the colonies to clear up hazardous waste. The growing despair of her existence permeates the novel. Fred is Offred’s second commander. As a regime leader, Fred feels he can bend the rules: instead of confining his contact with Offred to the monthly insemination ceremony, he seeks out her company. His wife, Serena Joy, is desperate for a child, so she arranges for Offred to have sex with the chauffeur, Nick, which would result in both of them dying if they were caught.In snatched conversations, Offred learns from another handmaid, Ofglen, that there is an underground rebellion. When Ofglen is captured, she commits suicide rather than betray other group members, buying precious time for Offred. Nick, another member of the underground organization, helps Offred escape. As well as warning women not to become complacent about the gains that previous generations of women have achieved, Atwood’s novel provides a subjective glimpse at the horrors that can occur when religion and politics collide.

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