Finally getting the time-consuming computer problem solved (with a fax machine, second hard drive, and scanner to hook up still plus a camcorder to fiddle with), I’ve gotten back into sitting around eating bon-bons and reading some of the days away.
Before I comment on some of the good, let me point out one thing that has bothered me since I first encountered it early in the book. On the floor of the closet in her room, Offred finds the inscription, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." She doesn’t know what it means, but takes it as a message from the handmaid who had the room prior to her. Now she’s a college graduate, having had to take some language, I’m sure. I find it hard to believe that she couldn’t have arrived at some close general translation. Even I guessed at "no let the bastards …." before checking it out on the internet.
A small thing, but I find that something even minor like this sets me at a wary frame of mind, not totally trusting the author enough to fall totally into the story he/she weaves (the bliss, as Barthes would have it).
That said, I’m very admiring of Atwood’s methods in sequencing the plot structure. We’ve started off with a rather slow story as Offred merely leaves the house to go to the grocery. But we know something is terribly wrong: it becomes obvious that she’s on the East Coast of the U.S.A., that a war’s going on, that the social structure has become completely strange, and in it all, she gives us very little bits of information as to how it’s all come about. But do we have to know? Offred’s current position appears to be her second one, so we know a few years have gone by since the big change. We know her husband and daughter are lost to her, and that the three of them tried to escape but were caught. This is the present, it’s bad enough. It doesn’t really matter what brought the population to this point, especially since it appears that the story isn’t focusing on any major rebellion that could turn things over again.
Atwood finally lets us know how things came down, but it’s not until page 175 (out of 300), and again, little by little we find out how it personally changed Offred’s life. At about the same point in the book, Offred’s present is changing as her relationship with the Commander becomes more relaxed and she finds out what happened to the handmaid before her–information she feels gives her some power over the Commander. Oddly enough, Atwood has her character falling back upon what are known as "feminine wiles" in this silent but evidently still very much alive battle of the sexes.
The pacing at this time in the book is definitely picking up, and Atwood has left several hints that had I posted on them with my immediate reaction, would have shown me to have become quite an astute reader as she comes back to them with a purpose later in the story.
So far, my admiration for Atwood has been fully justified by this book.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology