How appropriate is the ending to "The Handmaid's Tale"?
How appropriate is the ending to “The Handmaid’s Tale”?
The ending of The Handmaid’s Tale, although is not a satisfactory ending for the reader, suits the novel very well. Its ambiguity follows the same ambiguous themes which we have already seen permeate the whole text.
Atwood uses the last sentence of the text “the darkness within; or else the light” deliberately, to continue with the ambiguity, and to act as a device to not actually end the novel, but to keep the reader guessing. The “darkness” and the “light” obviously represent Offred’s death or escape, but we never find out which one becomes of her, so we are continuously left wondering.
The intentions of Nick’s character are never fully understood during the novel, and even at the end we are still unsure as to whether or not he is a genuine character “Nick, the private eye”. When he calls Offred by her “real name” during her removal, this hints that Nick is in fact helping her to escape, and not sending her to her death, as through out the book, she has used her real name as her code for survival, and as a way of clinging on to the past. Nick’s character can also be linked to that of the commander, who is perhaps one of the most ambiguous characters of the whole book. This linking of these two can also help the reader to recognise the doubles theme, which permeates the whole text.
