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Summary

Summary of The Handmaid's Tale

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This is a summary of the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It covers the entire book with notes on every chapter and a list of all the most important quotes, which are really good to use in essays for referencing. Also includes important themes, imagery and some essay question examples.

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Summary
Night
- Memory of Red Centre → prison-like
Shopping
- Where you may see someone from before, a friend → hope
- Offred & Ofglen go shopping → pictures, tokens, no reading
- Janine (Ofwarren) shows off pregnancy
- Japanese tourists → evidence of brainwashing
- The Wall → brutality
- Aunt Lydia is the propaganda machine
Night
- Night is her safe haven, her own time
- Memory of Moira on her bed
- Memory of mom & burning porn
- Mention her daughter was taken
Waiting Room
- Ofglen tries the mayday
- Econowife funeral
- Memory of Serena Joy on TV
- Smells the kitchen → makes her think of her daughter
- Moment with commander passing in the hall
- Bath day
- Memory that she divided room into sections
- Nolite te bastardes carborundorum → the previous handmaid
- Old praise songs & sects are outlawed
- Gilead came to be slowly
- Doctor’s visit
- Bath time → brainwashing
- Memory of daughter being stolen in shop
- Prep for the ceremony
Nap
- Waiting before ceremony
- Memories of Moira in the centre
- Testifying at the centre → cult-like, group humiliation, ritualised
- Trying to escape with her daughter, running
Household
- Ritual of the TV & bible before the ceremony
- Wanting to steal
- Their attempt at leaving into Canada
- Cherry picked beatitudes
- Moira’s first escape attempt
- The ceremony
- Butter
- Kissing Nick in the living room → invitation from the commander

, Night
- Memory of Luke
- Imagines scenarios of what happened to Luke
Birth Day
- The red birthmobile
- The wives celebrate
- The birthing ritual → birthing stool, chants
- Memory of movies at the red centre → mom protesting
- Moira’s escape
- First meeting with commander → scrabble
Night
- Offred takes stock, calls herself Offred, age etc
- I can ask for something → the relevance of the meetings with Commander
- Hysteria fit
Soul Scrolls
- Cora shock and little moment for them
- Nick’s signal (hat askew or not on)
- Play scrabble again, reads magazine
- Ordering prayers → holy rollers
- Man abducted on the street → constant fear
- More visits with the commander
- How Gilead came to be slowly
- Truth of the phrase
Night
- Killing the cat ;-;
- Offred’s version of the Lord’s prayer
Jezebel’s
- Learns about mayday from Ofglen
- Serena Joy suggests Nick
- Asks for a match → the possibilities
- Prayvaganza
- Ofglen asking her to find stuff out from the commander
- Thoughts on love
- Sees picture of her daughter
- Old lingerie, takes her to Jezebel’s
- Reunion with Moira → the underground Female road, life in the colonies, saw mother
- Sex with the commander → “fake it it’s the least you could do”
Night
- Two different tellings of encounter with Nick
Salvaging
- Her risky meetings with Nick → she has feelings for him
- Her obsession with Nick even at the salvaging
- Aunt Lydia returns with her bullshit
- The rope is a symbol of complicity

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Schooljaar
200
Uploaded on
September 4, 2025
Number of pages
8
Written in
2022/2023
Type
Summary
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