Offred's Unreliable Narration

“It isn’t a story I’m telling.

It’s also a story I’m telling, in my head, as I go along” (p. 39).

Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred frequently reminds us that this story is a “reconstruction”, that she is telling us what happened, and that that is all we get to know. This idea first comes up on page 39, when Offred is spiraling, saying she wishes she was telling a story and she wants someone to tell her story too. At this point in the text, I was so overwhelmed by this new society that the book takes place in, all of the characters, and the lack of backstory that I glossed over this section, not recognizing that Offred was essentially admitting to being an unreliable narrator.

The first time her narration really made me stop to question the story’s reliability was when she described Moira’s escape. In this section, Offred recounts events that she heard from Janine, who heard them from Aunt Lydia, who heard them from Aunt Elizabeth. This roundabout source is questionable to begin with, but Offred takes it one step further and adds details that she thinks probably happened: “I could kill you, you know, said Moira, when Aunt Elizabeth was safely stowed out of sight behind the furnace…Just remember I didn’t, if it ever comes to that. Aunt Lydia didn’t repeat any of this part to Janine, but I expect Moira said something like it” (p. 132). Offred has no source for this line of dialogue, only her familiarity with Moira and knowledge of events leading up to and following the alleged conversation. This made me wonder if Offred might have made up any other aspects of the story. We know that not everything she hears may be reliable, like the news, but could she have added in or taken out other important information from the narrative?

Just as the chapter on Moira’s escape casts doubt on the narration’s reliability, the very next chapter begins with the lines “This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction” (p. 134). Offred even tells us that “It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances…” (p. 134). Here, she is fully admitting that her words are not always reliable and true. She doesn’t seem to have ill intentions behind her questionable narration, but she does appear resigned to the fact that she will never achieve full honesty in her retellings. So we’re left with the knowledge that Offred’s memory poses a threat to her narration and creates this idea of the story being a “reconstruction”.

This frustrated me. I understood that Offred might not be able to recount details perfectly, especially when so much of the story takes place in the past, but it felt like she wasn’t even trying to be accurate. When describing her first time meeting up with the Commander in secret, Offred says, “I think about the blood coming out of him, hot as soup, sexual, over my hands. In fact I don’t think about anything of the kind. I put it in only afterwards. Maybe I should have thought about that, at the time, but I didn’t. As I said, this is a reconstruction” (p. 140). This section particularly irritated me. Why would she mislead us in the first place, telling us false information, just to end with a “Sike! That was a lie”? But in looking for someone to blame, I felt like I had to focus on Atwood, not Offred. Why had Atwood made this narrative choice? The story is already fiction, so she could write it however she wanted. Why not just give us reliable scenes? Particularly in the first third of the book, it was so hard keeping up with this new and disturbing society that having to question everything Offred says on top of it all just felt insulting.

But as my understanding of Offred’s world and her character expanded, I realized that the unique narration is as important as the setting and the characters. We learn about Offred through the way she tells her story, and end up with a better understanding of her role and how she views herself. When Offred says that she wishes this was a story she was telling, we recognize her desperation and the hardships she’s been put through. And because she’s recounting events from the past, she’s already had time to analyze and draw messages from her experiences. For example, describing a lesson from Aunt Lydia, Offred says “[Men] only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good…Aunt Lydia did not actually say this, but it was implicit in everything she did say” (p. 144). In a way, Offred makes some things easier for the reader by delivering information directly, even if the exact facts are a bit off. So while her inaccuracies can be jarring at times, I think the unique narration style adds a layer of depth to the story that it might not have otherwise.