SOURCE: “Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: False Borders and Subtle Subversions,” in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Vol. 6, Nos. 3-4, December, 1995, pp. 257-68.

In the following essay, Raschke examines the function of language as a tool of oppression and the objectification of opposing strategies of deconstruction and multiple interpretation in The Handmaid's Tale.

Don't ask for the true story; why do you need it? 

Margaret Atwood, True Stories

A disturbing futuristic tale of an ultra-right take over, where women are forced to bear children, where written and physical communication are severely circumscribed, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is, in part, a warning. Cities under siege, nuclear fallout, seepage of chemical toxins, an austere class system, political and social unrest, and the subsequent fundamentalist take over of “The Sons of Jacob Think Tanks” mirror too closely current American problems. Creating a nostalgia for pre-Gilead in which the narrator wistfully remembers...