A persistent aspect of Atwood’s narrative in The Handmaid’s Tale is her continuous reference to the past alongside her descriptions of the present. As we mentioned in class, she writes in the present continuous, which indicates that the actions that she describes happen as she writes them, yet she couples this tense with descriptions of the past as well. The opening, as we mentioned in class, manifests this decision particularly well. Atwood uses phrases such as “had once,” “would have been,” and “formerly were,” suggesting, within the first few lines of the novel, that the setting has undergone some drastic transformation. The film adaptation that we watched today began in a similar, but more straightforward way– it explicitly showed how Offred ended up in the situation that she is in now. The novel slowly reveals the past, withholding a true explanation and understanding of the conditions until the very end.

This narrative structure is meant to mimic Offred’s experience; she was abruptly thrown into this new way of life and separated from her husband and child. In a sense, Offred is bound by her past yet forced to leave it behind; the use of present continuous in conjunction with mentions of the past parallel this sense of binding, as the present narrative continues, but is frequently interrupted with “episodes” of past experiences. Atwood’s reference to freedom alludes to this idea: “In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from” (24). Yet, Offred lives in an even more oppressive society, and internally, her freedom exists in the forms of memories of the past. Thus, this quote along with the narrative style, serve to satirize the societal structure in the text, revealing that it is no way liberating, but is in fact quite the opposite.