The Handmaid's Tale

As I went back and skimmed the Handmaid's Tale looking for quotes and things to use for my blog, I noticed how much Margaret Atwood uses flowers as symbols. Mainly she uses the flowers as symbols for women in general, and at times especially handmaids. At one point in the beginning of the book Atwood is describing the house, and she says, “above the front door, is a fanlight of colored glass: flowers, red and blue” (9). I took this to symbolize the two main women of the household; Serena Joy (blue), and Offred (red). As I thought about the colors and the women being flowers, I thought about the other women of the household: the Marthas. The Marthas wear green, so I took this to symbolize the stems of the flower, which do all the work, and make the energy for the rest of the plant. So the Marthas are the stems and Serena Joy and Offred are the flowers. In another part of the book, the flowers are described as chalices, and at first, we talked in class about how the chalice was just pertaining to Offred, but as I thought about it further, I realized that it’s both Offred and Serena Joy. They’re both empty chalices, but the difference is that Serena Joy isn’t disposable. At one point in the book it says that when the flowers get old and the petals wither, it’s time to dispose of them, and it’s the same with Offred, once she’s used and starts to get old, it’s time to get rid of her. That’s ironic because that’s just like the society we live in. We all turn old things in to get the new thing, the new toy, because “old” is out. Another use of flowers as symbols is when Atwood uses them to tell about the struggle for the women to be heard. Offred tells us, “There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently” (153). This means that the women are silenced, and they can’t speak up, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to be heard in some way, to try to bring the truth into the light. The flowers are very important in this novel. These are just a few of the many examples I found.

My favorite passage is, “She was snipping off the seedpods with a pair of shears…the swelling genitalia of the flowers…the fruiting body…Saint Serena, on her knees, doing penance” (153). I really liked this passage because of the image I get. I don’t just see Serena Joy tending her garden, I see her bitterly chopping off the seedpods, and I see her almost chopping at the handmaid’s uterus, trying to cut that out, make them not be able to reproduce. This was such an interesting passage to me because of the symbolism and innuendoes that are hidden beneath the surface.

I liked this book the best out of all the dystopias we read because I understood the characters and the plot made me want to read it. This was a book I didn’t want to put down (except for some of the graphic parts), and I wanted to know more about the society. I was clamoring for more at the end, unlike in Anthem and We. In both of those I was bored. With Anthem I didn’t think there was a great plot, and with We I couldn’t relate to the characters at all. At first I was critical of Handmaid’s Tale, but it may now be one of my favorite books I’ve read in school.