Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Handmaid's Tale: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #40

By Kathryn Cope

An essential tool for all reading groups, this comprehensive book club guide provides a detailed analysis of The Handmaid's Tale. 
Covering a wealth of information on Margaret Atwood's modern classic, this guide includes thought-provoking discussion questions; a plot summary; literary & historical context; character breakdowns; themes & imagery; recommended further reading and even a quick quiz. For followers of the Hulu TV adaptation, there is also a comparison of the book and the series with accompanying discussion questions.
Study Guides for Book Clubs are designed to help you get the absolute best from your book club meetings. Please be aware they are companion guides and do not contain the original text of the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Cope
• Release date: Sep 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393073512

Kathryn Cope

Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

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Introduction

There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective and ideally there will be heated debate.

A surprising number of book club members, however, report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even though their group loved the book they were discussing, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group discussions to fall flat. Most book groups only meet once a month, and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography, historical context, and style sections provide useful background information which may be interesting to share with your group at the beginning of your meeting. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you may find it helpful to refer to the Setting, Themes, and Character sections.

A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire if you need to recap on the finer points of the plot. There is also a quick quiz – a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you particularly enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of books similar in style or subject matter.

This guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have read the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

Kathryn Cope, 2019

Margaret Atwood

Life

Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most celebrated novelist, lives in Toronto. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. The daughter of a forest entomologist, she spent the early years of her life living in the wilds of North Quebec.

After taking her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, Atwood gained a master’s degree from Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962. She went on to teach English and then held a variety of academic posts while writing. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Atwood has been awarded sixteen honorary degrees; the Order of Ontario; the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit; and the Booker Prize.

Margarete Atwood is a vocal campaigner for human rights and environmental causes. She has enthusiastically embraced new writing technologies when many established authors have been wary of them. A regular contributor to Twitter, she has also used digital fiction platforms to launch her work and helped to develop the LongPen: a digital tool enabling authors to sign books for readers on the other side of the world.

Work

Over the years, Atwood has experimented with different genres and subject matter within her fiction. Her novels have explored the boundaries of historical fiction, the detective novel, science fiction and Shakespeare. She is also admired as a feminist writer, creating strong, complex female characters and exploring gender ideology and sexual politics. Although her subject matter is often dark, her work is characterised by a playful sense of humour.

Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman, tells the story of a woman with an eating disorder and was published in 1969. This was followed in 1973 by Surfacing, which explores a woman’s journey into madness as she investigates the disappearance of her father. Several equally eclectic novels followed, culminating in the publication, in 1986, of the work Atwood was to become most well-known for. The Handmaid’s Tale has become a widely studied modern classic and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

Following the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood continued to produce a stream of critically acclaimed novels, all very different in subject matter and style. Cat’s Eye (1989) examines the psychological effects of childhood bullying and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Robber Bride (1993) is a whodunit, centring upon the death of Zenia, a blackmailing husband stealer, who wreaks devastation on the lives of the women who are unfortunate enough to cross her path. Atwood’s ninth novel, Alias Grace (1996) marked the author’s first foray into historical fiction, reimagining the story of the notorious nineteenth-century convict, Grace Marks. Alias Grace was shortlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes and won the Giller Prize.

Atwood’s enthusiasm for mixing genres continued with the publication of The Blind Assassin in 2000. Part-family saga, part-romance, part-detective story, this novel gradually reveals the history of its protagonist, Iris, through a number of sources and clues. Playful and dazzlingly complex, it finally won Atwood the Booker Prize for Fiction.

In 2003, Atwood published Oryx and Crake, the first book in what was to become her ‘MaddAddam trilogy’. This novel marked Atwood’s return to dystopian science fiction, or what she prefers to call speculative fiction. In this dark vision of the future, Atwood’s protagonist, Snowman, believes he is the only human being left alive after a lethal pandemic has devastated the planet. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction, Oryx and Crake was followed by The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013): novels which expand upon the dystopian world created in the first of the trilogy.

Atwood’s fifteenth novel, The Heart Goes Last, originated as a four-episode series on the digital platform byliner.com. It was expanded into a full-length novel in 2015 and explores the potential impact of technology upon human sexual relationships. Hag-Seed (2016), a modern reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest quickly followed. In September 2019, The Testaments – the much-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – will be published.

While Atwood is best known for her novels, her literary output in other areas has been extraordinary. She has written short stories; screenplays; radio plays; critical articles; reviews; children’s books and several acclaimed collections of poetry.

Over a career spanning fifty years, Atwood’s fiction has never fallen out of favour becoming, if anything, more relevant as time goes on. Hulu’s recent Emmy award-winning adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale is proof of this enduring popularity. The enthusiastic reception this series received from critics and viewers alike demonstrates the dynamism of Atwood’s literature. Hot on the heels of this success followed the Netflix adaptation of Alias Grace. Both TV productions include cameo appearances by the author.

Plot Synopsis

Offred is the narrator of the novel. Her backstory is gradually revealed in the course of her narrative as she casts her mind back to earlier events.

Offred lives in the state of Gilead (formerly the United States). The USA ceased to exist after the president was assassinated, Congress was massacred, and the Constitution was suspended. These events were said to be the work of Islamic terrorists but were really the result of an internal military coup.

Gilead is a totalitarian republic. Drawing on rising fears about the dramatically declining birth rate, its creators erased women’s rights almost overnight, freezing their bank accounts, and forbidding them from undertaking paid work, holding property or reading. Fertile women were forced to become Handmaids, bearing children for the most powerful men and their Wives. Remaining women were classified into Marthas (household servants), Aunts (the instructors of Handmaids), and Unwomen