Margaret Atwood built up a religious society that prioritze’s reproduction in The Handmaid’s Tale. As a society, women often fear men whether that be catcalling or assault. But there is also a selection of women who don’t feel disgusted by catcalling. Offred is a woman who has no power in her society, Gilead. She does not leave her house very much due to her role as a handmaid and when she does, she is with a partner. “As we walk away I[Offred] know they’re watching, these two men who aren’t yet permitted to touch women. They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me.”(22) which infers that she feels a sense of power when she is provoking the young soldiers in the streets. It is quite odd how she does not feel fear during this moment and how big the contrast is compared to our society today.

Even though Gilead protects women now, it was never like that. The book mentions “rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew: Don’t open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police… Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don’t turn to look.”(24). The past Gilead is very similar to our society now. The same rules apply to women today however, our society is definitely more dangerous. Women often fear talking to men in the streets due to activities like rape or assault. Although it is advised for women to not go out alone, many resort to having self defense weapons. Gilead solved this problem as Offred mentioned “We aren’t allowed to go there except in twos. This is supposed to be for our protection, though the notion is absurd: we are well protected already.”(19). The difference between Gilead and our society today shows how comfortable women feel around men in public.

This also brings up later on when Offred was “ashamed of [her]self for doing it”(22) which is how she acknowledges that it is wrong but yet she feels pleasure from doing it. This small bit of power she has over these men brings her joy due to her relation to men in general. but yet society makes it so women are only objects. As the Atwood “there is supposed to be nothing entertaining about us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toehold for love. We are two-legged wombs, that’s all:sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”(136). However this is not much different than our society today. Women are often seen as disposable and objects when it comes to men’s sexual desires. Offred knows she is only “for breeding purposes”(136) which makes this dynamic of a young man that can’t touch her and a woman who accepts the fact that she is just an object. In today’s society, women are not objects and many speak out on this subject. Feminist movements are bigger than ever and the people are fighting for women’s rights. This does not exist in the present Gilead however it may have been a movement in the past Gilead.

Although this ideology exists, women still find pleasure in being catcalled. In our society today, street culture often puts women in fear but catcalling is very two sided. One side is very disturbing where women are scared to walk outside, in fear that they will be touched. The other side is odd where women feel pride and an ego boost when a man shouts for them. Offred is a part of the other side but it is purely based on how Gilead functions as a society. Offred wants men to think about her and “hopes they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously.” because this gives her the satisfaction she wants. Although a selection of women choose to brag and gloat about being catcalled, the majority are aware of the danger of men. Maybe women feel this way because of the lack of power these women feel. This could also contribute to their confidence and self esteem because they want to feel like they matter. Overall, it is a toxic mentality that kind of discards the fear factor of the society around women. Offred is protected in Gilead but women in today’s society still live in fear.

I chose to depict the scene before the Ceremony, when everyone gathers in the sitting room to read the Bible. This scene is very visual and physical, with everyone gathered awkwardly, waiting for the Commander. Everyone has their spot in the room, dictated by their role in the household. I could very clearly picture this scene - everyone in their distinct colors, in this ornate, victorian sitting room that seems unused until this moment.

When the Commander comes in, Offred says “He manages to appear puzzled, as if he can’t quite remember how we all got in here. As if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn’t figured out what to do with us. What we are worth.,” (Atwood, 87) The people waiting for the Commander are presented as an assortment, a collection even, and one that doesn’t seem very valuable. The image is even clearer after she says this, and so is the significance of this moment. This is the gathering of the household, revealing the true hierarchy - the Commander above all else. The wife is stripped of her illusion of power during this moment and the rest of the Ceremony. This is not her house, as much as she acts like it is. They are all under the rule of the Commander, under the ownership of the Commander. Offred asks, “…If he were to falter, fail, or die what would become of us?” (Atwood, 88) They are nothing without him. He provides them with the small amount of safety and power they have now. They are his property. Like objects, they will be sent off to an unknown place, lost, powerless, and purposeless without him. All of that becomes clear in this moment, for Offred and the reader.

I chose to depict the women and Nick as mere colors, with no other identifying features, because they aren’t seen as fully human by the Commander and the larger society. They are defined by their duty to their society and have no value outside of their household role. They are painted, rather than drawn to differentiate them from the Commander and the room, his room. The Commander is depicted as a human because his humanness is the only one that is valued by this society. The others are just extras, a piece of his world.

I also read the description of the room very carefully and tried to replicate it the best I could. Offred mentions the symmetry of the room, so I made the room completely symmetrical except for the group of people and the table with the Bible. She talks about the daffodils on the table next to the sofa, and the ornate chairs the Commander and Wife sit in. The mantel is described in great detail, with dried flowers on either side and silver candlesticks on either side of the mirror, which is flanked by old paintings of women. I included all of these because the physicality and atmosphere are very important in this scene - the ornate, unused sitting room makes the Ceremony even more awkward.

My artwork depicts a pigeon poking itself to death as a representation of a handmaid. This is based on writing from Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, as the main character, Offred, had given inspiration for this drawing in chapter thirteen.

During this section, Offred is speaking about the extensive free time she has now that she is serving her new role in society. She starts to draw comparisons between herself and animals, such as pigs being entertained with balls in which they roll with their snouts. She had learned about this in a Psychology class. However the author decides to include another strange animal fact about pigeons, as Offred remembers more from this very same class. Offred reminisces about this on page seventy, reciting: “And the one on the pigeons, trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They’d peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked?” As a reader this can be recognized as a strange side tangent, but with closer inspection there can be many layers to interpret. This seems to be a reference to the obvious baby and reproduction issue that Offred’s society is dealing with, as the seeds represent the babies, slowly ceasing to be birthed on a frequent basis. However, why would this result in the pigeons killing themselves? This could be Offred seeing herself and the other handmaids as the pigeons, pecking for a brighter future however not knowing the attempts are purposeless. They could be simply killing themselves, which I attempted to show in my drawing.

Offred mentions this feeling of hopelessness many times. She wishes for a brighter future beyond her current situation. She likes to assure herself that there is an escape but still recognizes that she might not get that opportunity. Offred most clearly states these ideas on page one hundred thirty four, explaining, “I intend to get out of here. It can’t last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn’t last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.” This quote represents Offred’s knowledge that her situation might be the end of her, that she might be stuck for the rest of “the forever” she has. Though this doesn’t crush her belief in a better life, she still keeps pressing this button of hope, even if it may not ever give her the symbol of a “seed” that she desires. When I was making my drawing this is what I had in mind, the symbolic connection between Offred, the handmaids, and the pigeons. Pecking themselves to death in her Psychology class.

I created a collage of a picture of a Handmaid, but as a doll. Throughout the text, Offred compares herself and others in her situation to dolls because of the way they are being controlled. While in conversation with Serena Joy, Offred remarks to herself, “They used to have dolls, for little girls, that would talk if you pulled a string at the back; I thought I was sounding like that, voice of a monotone, voice of a doll.” (pg. 16) Offred has no self expression or free will. Like a doll, she is being controlled, and everything she says is what she’s supposed to say, and everything she does is dictated by the will of others.

Another thing that struck me about the text is the way the handmaids are treated like children. This is especially seen in the scenes that take place in the gymnasium. The handmaids go through a sort of rebirth while in training, from cleansing themselves through Testifying, to total indoctrination and brainwashing at the hands of the Aunts. While reading this, I felt like the society was trying to create a blank slate out of the handmaids, someone new to the world, like a child. As I read the training scenes, I saw more of this. The handmaids call their mentors “aunt”, have daily naptime, are taught in a high school, and are overall put in situations that parallel those of kids. One example of this is when Janine Testifies and is humiliated in front of the handmaids, and they chant, “Crybaby, Crybaby. Crybaby.” (pg. 72) As soon as I first read this, “crybaby” struck me as an interesting choice of words. Crybaby is what kids call other kids when they’re making fun of them, it’s a word that’s associated with children. I found this to be another reason why a doll is a good metaphor for the handmaids. Dolls are toys for kids, and comparing the handmaids to dolls emphasizes the childlike manner in which they are treated.

I also decided to make the handmaid in my collage’s red dress made of flowers. From the first few chapters, I noticed connections between the handmaids and flowers. While Offred and Serena Joy are waiting for the Ceremony to begin, Offred narrates about her companion, “Even at her age she still feels the urge to wreathe herself in flowers. No use for you, I think at her, my face unmoving, you can’t use them any more, you’re withered.” (pg. 81-82) Offred is criticizing the Commander’s Wife’s obsession with flowers which we see in the text through her perfume choice, decor, and of course, her dedication to her garden. During a group discussion, several of my table mates thought that the garden represented motherhood, and Serena Joy’s commitment to her garden was her practicing for her one role in society. This made me later think that flowers represented children and fertility. It would explain why Offred reacted the way she did to the Commander’s Wife’s interest in flowers, describing her as withered, and why Serena Joy is obsessed with them in the first place.

Not only do the flowers represent fertility, but the handmaids themselves, since handmaids aren’t treated as real people, and their only purpose is for their job. The text describes the life of a tulip the same as it describes that of a handmaid, stating, “The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, then explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards.” (pg. 45). This description of the flowers almost exactly parallels the life of a handmaid. To the republic, there is no difference between handmaids and their job, they are one in the same.

“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.

I decided to focus my artwork on a brief event in chapter 8. On Offred and Ofglen walk home, a funeral of three women – an Econowife, a mourner, and her friend possibly – pass by them. “The first one is the bereaved, the mother; she carries a small black jar. From the size of the jar you can tell how old it was when it foundered, inside her, flowed to its death”[page 44]. I want to draw the jars of dead babies. I imagine it to be foggy inside the jar instead of a solid black color. I drew some texture inside the jar so it looked like particles instead of a smooth, solid black liquid.

I drew small puddles of blood to resemble death. I could only imagine how they got the dead baby out of the women. Since people of Gilead only do natural birth, I doubt they use any medication to help ease pain for the women if they were in pain before or after their birth.

I wanted to use a vibrant red color to represent the recurring red symbol in the book. “Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us” [page 8]. Red represents blood which is what makes a person. So red is in you. Why are Handmaids the only ones wearing red? The symbol of the color red is unclear but I do have many theories. Much like the theory I recently stated, Red is resembling bodies, but bodies who are capable of getting pregnant. I do think it could be an idea but I also feel as though blood has a negative connotation. The war could be a factor. I think blood on your hands (murder) is a bad thing if it is for the wrong cause. “Sometimes they’ll be there for days, until there’s a new batch, so as many people as possible will have the chance to see them.” For men to be hanged to show Gilead’s power. The murder is on Gilead, not the people who hanged them on the Wall. The bloody men on the Wall is okay but blood is to show fear or instill fear.

I drew a table in the background to show how people of Gilead don’t know where dead babies go, let alone dead people. It is an interesting concept in the book where they’re aren’t really a lot of old people in the world. I imagine it’s like leaving something on a table in your house. If someone else walks by, the person may wonder whose it is. There is a select amount to choose from. I don’t know why I thought of it like that. Pregnancy is not common and celebrated largely in Gilead. So if someone sees a black jar, there is only a select group of people who may claim the jar. So it is a process of elimination and determining the timeline to which they may figure out who the baby belongs to. This probably doesn’t make any sense but that is how I thought of it. I do hope they bury the baby but they could also repurpose it in a way (fuel..?).

Overall, I really wanted people to focus on the jars and I put Gilead right next to the jars on purpose so viewers can see what Gilead is doing to premature babies.

As the maids stand in a circle, they point and blame Janine for being what would be known as unwomen. This is after she openly talked about how she was raped at fourteen, giving her an unwanted pregnancy which led her to have an abortion, something that was her full right. In the society of Gilead, pregnancies are sacred, if either the mom (maid) wants it or not. This secret which was told by Janine herself, brought her a sort of consequence. As she kneeled down, with her hands behind her back Martha could see. Everyone surrounds her and starts to chant, “Her fault” as they all point at her. “Last week, Janine burst into tears. Aunt Helena made her kneel at the front of the classroom. Hands behind her back, where we could all see her, her red face and dripping nose. Her hair was dull blond, her eyelashes so light they seemed not there, the lost eyelashes of someone who’d been in a fire. Burned eyes. She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, blotchy, pink, like a newborn mouse. None of us wanted to look like, ever. For a moment, even though we knew what was being done to her, we despised her” (Pg.72) This scene demonstrates and shows a lot about what the book is all about. Women mentally abusing women, women being controlled by a society that denies their right to their bodies, and shames them if they oppose this new society’s ideologies. But no one is to blame these maids who shame Janine because they have been shamed/scared in order to follow the established beliefs, of being objects to give birth to children. For my first Lit log, I demonstrated this scene, in order to show the visual representation of how Janine would have looked and felt. In my drawing, she kneels down in front of six maids all pointing at her with their red long dresses that cover every inch of their bodies. Whitecaps cover their heads and eyes. I shade the sides of the paper in dark and in a triangle shape leaving blank up into where Janine is kneeling. This is to demonstrate the attention that she is being given. But not the good type of attention, the one where she is being stared at and it makes her feel uncomfortable around all the maids, chanting at her about how she’s a crybaby. As well as the shading of the drawing, the maid’s dress color is more light red, meanwhile Jenina is bright red in order to show her apart from the others. To put her in the spotlight of the drawing, her hands can also be seen behind her, giving the viewer perspective of her hands, in a way we are the ones who see how she’s helpless. It’s a cycle of fear, Janine is humiliated, scared, meanwhile as Aunt Lydia states in the passage. “ You are an example”, an example to all the other women to not go against the beliefs. Especially when it comes to abortion, where the punishment is death, for both the maid and the doctor who decides to help. The maids will know not to commit the same “crime” or they will have to face a punishment.