You've read Stargirl. (One of the best books written, in my humble opinion.) Did you read the sequel?
I actually haven’t read it yet! It’s in my ever-growing To Be Read list so I just have to get around to checking it out. From what I understand it’s in Stargirl’s POV which should be really great because she’s spectacular
This review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.
The Handmaid's by Margaret Atwood | Rating:
So I thought I'd do something different and post a literary analysis I wrote today during my AP English class seeing as how I haven't had much time to write actual reviews. Just a random idea I had, but let me know if you guys want me to keep posting stuff like this once in a while. It's sort of rusty since I wrote it in class, but I think it's OK if I do say so myself.
Analysis: Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale explores the patriarchal society of Gilead through the personal account of the protagonist, Offred. However, through many of Offred's own words, it is revealed that her narration is not entirely reliable. The idea that Offred constructs her own story as a way to liberate herself from a society and an environment that opress her affects the reader's understanding of several events in the novel.
By way of illustration, Offred's numerous different accounts detailing her first sexual encounter with Nick are ways for her to create something significant that even the totalitarian society that she has been forced to live in cannot take away from her. She begins by reminding the reader that she has altered her narration for the reader's benefit as well as her own: "I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story... I've tried to put some of the good things in as well" (267). Her first description of her encounter with Nick is of a more liberating experience: "I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling" (260). However, Offred immediately contradicts herself afterwards, stating: "I made that up. It didn't happen that way" (260). Through this reconstruction, the reader becomes aware that Offred wishes that her real experience with Nick had been different.
As she continues to describe what she claims to be a true account of what happened, it becomes clear that Offred's real experience with Nick was more blunt and clumsy: "He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling... I feel stupid and ugly..." (261). However, even in this recollection, Offred admits that she altered some aspects of the "truth": "There wasn't any thunder though, I added that in. To cover up the sounds, which I am ashamed of making" (261). Again, through the unreliability of Offred's narration, a new aspect of her experience is revealed: the fact that Offred was ashamed to have had such a rushed and secret sexual encounter, or even the fact that she was ashamed to have had a sexual encounter of any kind.
Throughout the entirety of the novel, Offred makes these same "reconstructions." In one scene, she describes kissing the Commander: "I got to him and place my lips, closed, against his... 'Not like that,' he says. 'As if you meant it.' He was so sad. That is a reconstruction, too" (142). The fact that it is unclear which part of Offred's account is a reconstruction is what makes each reader's understanding of an event in the novel so unique, and it is what makes Offred so unreliable as a narrator.
However, what is clear is that Offred uses these changes in her account as a way to free herself from her oppression. By imagining different scenarios of an event that she has experienced, such as her sexual encounter with Nick, and "reconstructing" other significant moments in her life, such as her time with the Commander, Offred creates several alternate realities in where she can liberate herself from her real situation.
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