Who Would I Have Been? - Readers Response

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood all of the handmaids are basically prisoners. The only thing that people can’t stop them from doing is remembering their old life, and imagining who they would have been if they weren’t handmaids. “The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. The night is my time out. Where should I go?…I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling… if it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.” The main character Offred talks about what she did when she was younger with her mom, and remembers the old times with her best friend Moira. Those parts make me think of myself, when I sit at school during lunch or lay in bed trying to fall asleep. I think about my home, Poland. I like to go back to Poland in my head, I like to keep the memories just how they are, remember all the vacations with my parents, my childhood friends and all the things we would do at the park and in our little town. However, at the end, a lot of the times I end the story a different way than it actually happened, so that I feel better about moving here. I just tell myself a story about how coming here was better for me. Tell myself that if I was in Poland I wouldn’t have met all my friends, played sports, and had all the opportunities that I have here. Sometimes deep down I hope I would have hated it more in Poland than I do here, even though deeper down I know I would be happy there. Offred talks about her memories more than actually thinking about how her life would be right now, if everything was still normal; but I still feel like I have a personal connection to Offred, when she mentions having her free time. This connects to when Offred would watch television in the morning, and if there was nothing to watch she would put on “Growing Souls Gospel Hour ” where they told Bible stories for children and sang hymns. “The first time was on television, when I was eight or nine… one of the women was called Serena Joy. She was the lead soprano…the woman sitting in front of me was Serena joy. Or had been, once.” When she was 8, Offred used to watch Serena on television, 25 years later she’s her handmaid; this represents how we never know what will happen next, everything can change overnight; the only thing that will never really change is our ability to make stories, and remember everything that has happened to us before. Serena used to be this big, famous, person, but now she’s a nobody; her life changed out of nowhere, and now she’s doing the same thing to Offred. I used to watch American movies with my parents. I would dream about going to an American high school with a football field and going to games with my friends… but now that I’m actually here, it’s nothing like the movies I watched. “ the things I believe can’t all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe in all of them, all three versions of Luke. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.” This part from Chapter 18 I feel summarizes Offred’s true feelings. She needs to have hope; hope that everything will end soon, she gets to see Luke again and her daughter. She hopes to get to live with them again, cross the border successfully and never have to worry about being taken away from them, and being killed for something that people shouldn’t have to worry about getting killed over. She hopes that she can go outside anytime she wants, go to the store and talk to people, find Moira and tell her everything that has happened to her. She hopes for her “old life” back. The Handmaid’s Tale is a representation of the word hope, and shows the reader that anything can change in life, but the past is never gone, and imagination can make or break a person.