The Handmaid´s Tale Blog #3

Geena Motto 

This blog post will cover chapters 28-46 in ¨The Handmaid´s Tale¨ by Margaret Atwood. As readers know, Handmaids jobs are to conceive children for the Commanders and their wives. Although Serena has never been kind to Offred, one day she pulls her aside in private and tells her she believes her husband is unable to have children and that they should arrange for her to try to get pregnant in secret with someone else to avoid punishment. Serena arranges to have Nick and Offred try to conceive. As this happens, Nick and Offred begin an affair with eachother and see eachother secretly everyday. This is important because unlike her relationship with the commander, she actually has feelings for Nick and often times thinks she´s being unloyal to Luke when she is with Nick. As was begun in previous chapters, the ¨secret relationship¨ between the Commander and Offred intesifys. The Commander continues to invite Offred to his room at night, and one evening even snuck her out to a night club which was now illegal. There Offred sees her old friend Moira, who now worked as a dancer there as punishment for her attempted escape; she says she only has two or three more years to live. That night, Offred has to pretend to have feelings for the Commander to please him even though she feels he is forcing himself onto her. Later on, Serena finds out that Offred has snuck out with her husband and automatically gains back resentment. At this point in the book, Offred also hints that she may be pregnant although it is never confirmed. This is never confirmed because quickly after this Nick escorts Offred to ¨The Eyes¨ van, which is who is always watching. This is typically who escorts Handmaids when they´re being caught in a crime, but Nick whispers to Offred that these people are apart of Mayday (the mission to escape) and are going to rescue her. After this the narrator switches to a male professor who discovered the tapes in Maine and tries translating them hundreds of years later. The story ends.

   As someone who is a fan of the show that was created many years after the book was written, I enjoyed the novel and am glad it ended the way it did. I think the book goes into much better detail than the show does about the kind of society Gilead is and what really goes through Offreds mind. I also think the ending the author created was a smart one because it leaves the readers wondering many things like if Offred is in fact pregnant with Nick´s child or if the van that took her away was really going to help her escape or if Nick was an Eye this whole time and tricked her into getting punished. Overall I think this was a very good novel and believe it is very relevant to today´s society as womens rights and social status is still a problem today. I would highly recommend this book.