The Handmaid's Tale

The top three features that I believe best describes the book are:

• About loss of freedom to speak

Evidence from the text:

"If only we could talk to them" and "We learned to whisper almost without sound". These two quotes are both about freedom, about the loss of freedom to speak. These quotes are what Offred said at the beginning of the book, this tells me, as a reader that the society she lives in, they are not allowed to speak to each other unless they are been spoken to. The pronouns used in both quotes show that all the Handmaids are forbidden from speaking, so the pronouns shows how much they want to speak. The other pronouns used is the word 'them', this word describes another group of characters that are separate from another group, in this case, offerd and the other Handmaid's are forbidden to talk to the men. This is what she means when she says, them.

• About the control of language and therefore thought

Evidence from the text:

"I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely", this is what Offerd says when she is having a bath, what she means by this is that she refuses to look at her own body because she does not want to face the fact that she has no role in life except being used as a breeding-machine to bear the Commander's wife children. what she means in this quote is that her body is what protects her from death, it is what she can survive with otherwise she has to go to the Colonies which are for the Unwomen, women who are not fertile to bear children. She may be refusing the role she has as a handmaid. The quote contains personal pronoun which is believed to be Offred's own state of mind, directing the reader about her feelings.