RETHINKING PERSONAL HISTORY AND MAINTAINING INDENTITY – OFFRED IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S THE HANDMAID'S TALE
RETHINKING PERSONAL HISTORY AND MAINTAINING INDENTITY – OFFRED IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S THE HANDMAID'S TALE

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to explore the aspects of reviewing personal history and analyzing personal identity presented in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred’s story, which is presented to the reader as a written narrative reconstructed from tapes two centuries after her death and the end of the dictatorship of Gilead, are discussed at a scientific conference held on June 25, 2195. As a Handmaid in a service of Commander Waterford and a prisoner in his household, Offred‘s identity, her past and even her first name are taken away from her. Her role is limited to a child bearer only. Throughout the novel, Offred rethinks her former life, her tendency to live by ignoring, to take everything for granted and to trust fate. She remembers the days in the pre-Gilead society, where freedom to do something is replaced with freedom from doing in Gilead. She reviews her relationship with her mother and her attitude towards her mother’s values and feminism. She recollects her relationship with her husband, her role as a mother and her way of life in the pre-Gilead society. Offred compares her previous and her present status in a situation in which her personal freedom is almost nonexistent. In her newly-discovered self- awareness, she finds ways to redefine herself as a woman, as a lover and even as a victim.

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