Discuss the Narrative Structure of The Handmaid's Tale

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Grace Showell – English – Miss Parker                                                           02/05/07

Discuss the Narrative Structure of The Handmaid’s Tale

Offred’s narrative begins in the middle of the (more–or–less) present although, as the narrative progresses, we realise that she is narrating from some point in the near future even though she is using the present continuous (that is, the events in the present are told as if they are happening now). Offred uses flashbacks combined with limited hindsight to fill us in on the details which lead up to this present, and this has the advantage for her as a narrator of, in effect, having a double hindsight: that is, she can locate the events in the past in contrast to the circumstances of the present, and she can situate the present in the context of these hindsights whilst moving the story along to its conclusion. This complex narrative structure ensures that the reader is forced to work a little harder for comprehension.

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For instance, in the first chapter, Offred is in the gymnasium where women like her have been brought to be trained as handmaids (we only find this out in later chapters), and this gym is used as a point of reference for the pre–Gilead world. At this stage, Offred does not explain how or why she and the others are where they are. Her senses tell her things which go beyond immediate perception, however, and she smells, as an "afterimage" (an interpretive frame used constantly through the novel), the (pre–Gileadean) gymnasium with its sweaty smells, evocations of dances, desire, longing, ...

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