Chervaughn Archibald-William
The impression the reader gets of the section headings on the contents page is that the section entails what it is. It acts as a “brief summary” of the section. For example, the second section heading is named ‘Shopping’ and in that section the handmaid goes out food shopping for the household. There are many ideas that come to mind on what the sections are about based on the section headings.
Another example, the majority of the headings are named ‘Night’. The impression that the reader gets on this is one that suggests mystery. The noun ‘night’ connotes darkness, uncertainty and mischievousness, thus, the reader feeling that what goes on in those sections have something to do with those and may also not pleasant.
The author, Margaret Atwood, communicates information and attitudes in the first chapter. She does this by using a variety of literary devices.
She transmits the idea of loneliness and restriction by using imagery to allow the reader to get a clear picture of the handmaid’s surroundings. The idea of being patrolled with weapons and living in fear reinforces this.
Another literary device she uses is oxymorons. For example, Atwood refers to the handmaid’s ‘carers’ as Aunts but they are patrolling the handmaids with electric cattle prods. The noun, Aunt, connotes that they are warm and loving but yet they are patrolling their ‘nieces’ in a closed environment.
Atwood’s sentence structures when describing vivid memories of the handmaid are quite long as they contain lists.
The form that this novel appears to take is one of a dystopia and definitely implies that the narrator’s life is somewhat a dystopia in itself. We can interpret that the narrator speaks in first person because from the very beginning the handmaid speaks about her past using the pronoun, I. She constantly remembers and speaks about her past life as if it were her current life still.
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