Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale is constituted of two reports, i.e. that of the narrator-handmaid and that of a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies (Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale) held in 2195, which indicates that the novel is made in a form of a so-called “Rahmenbau”.
The story is constructed of 3 strata, i.e. the lost democracy, the lost dignity of women, and the lost family. This study finds that a recovery of these lost factors forms the literary motif of the novel. Employing a narratological approach, this study also reveals that the handmaid narrates as if she knew nothing about the events which have already happened, but in reality she knew the processes and the consequences of them.
Based on an analysis of her narrative style, this study argues that the information/discourse she gives to readers is not logical and reliable, but full of noise, ambiguity, irrelevance and confusion. This study analyzes a close relationship between a fluctuation of her logic and the weakness of the heroin, as she shows a fear whenever she is thrown into a difficult situation to confront danger or to make a decision. This relationship should not be regarded as a defect,; on the contrary they are tied up to form a human-centered narrativity. This study argues that a pursuit for power for its own sake forms a dictatorship and function as a tyrannical system, and to avoid a tendency to desire power, it is necessary for her to relativize a world or worlds, as Nelson Goodman documents.
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