To be disappointed with The Handmaid's Tale ending (the book)

[Buck3t]

Nothing has been resolved. It's infuriating me. Reminds me of how I felt at the end of Stephen King's Gunslinger series.

I understand your frustration. I appreciate why Atwood finishes the book as she does but part of me still wants a decisive resolution to Offred's story. I felt the same way about the ending of Atonement. It is an interesting literary device, which makes you think and highlights the fictive nature of what you have been reading, but part of me wants to yell at the author, 'why bother creating such believable characters if you are just going to finish by reminding me they are just in your head!'

I agree with you regarding the book.

I really hated the way the last chapter was written, with the (laughs, groans) peppered through.

During the lecture there seemed to still be (as I read it) laughter as points that minimised women as if there were a leftover of the attitudes from Gilead times

I thought this was a real strength of the book (that I didn't notice when I read it the first time, aged 17, but did when I reread it a couple of years ago) - I think it's an important, realistic but sobering touch that none of her possible worlds are a feminist utopia. The world before Gilead was better but had its pornobooths and other clear problems, and the world after Gilead, as you say, seems to have its own issues.

Reading your post has made me think about reading the Dark Tower series too (interested to see how the first film will be?) and I was also not massively impressed by the ending either, though it seemed hopeful for the future......

under please read upthread. Not rewriting. Sorry.

Aginghippy cool name btw. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I think the lack of resolution is kind of the point, and it's important the her story is left unresolved. Offred represents women, and our story is unresolved. To have ended or tied up the tale would have changed the dynamic of the book - it then would have been a story building towards death/happiness/whatever. To leave it just....there....allows Offred to continue to be the representation of women.

To me, some concrete ending for Offred would have significantly detracted from the book, because the real stinger in it is the academic conference of the coda. The academics minimise Offred, focus on the wrong things, and generally rest secure in the smugness that this would or could never happen to them now. That bit is essential to the message Atwood is sending. If Offred's story was all wrapped up, we, and they, would inevitably end up neatly moralising over it and drawing the wrong conclusions.

Offred's story matters in a way the academics miss because she was a real woman experiencing real pain and suffering. But at the same time, she wasn't special. There were hundreds if not thousands of Offreds suffering, and Marthas too, and wives, and women in the Colonies. Finding out what happens to one leads us in completely the wrong direction, IMO.

But thats how it ends for the majority of abused women. To them, its the whole world. To the world, they may as well not have existed.

MargaretC thanks for that, it's good to read differing opinions and the way you see it and why you see it that way is interesting.

Under - that is well articulated.

Anne Frank!! Yes, thank goodness for the Holocaust - otherwise we'd never have known what happened to her...

Johhnyu bbcessex you totally get me.

Smile, undersecretary, DJ different perspective that I honestly appreciate. But...

I thought it was a pretty happy ending considering all the other possible endings that were easily foreseeable.

Caonimartacus Indeed.

The not knowing what happened was partly to make a point about how women's histories have been invisiblised.
We don't know she didn't escape. She could have got to Canada. It's completely open.

Bobbybobbins totally loved the Gunslinger series (apart from the last two pages). Can't wait for the movie. It's not quite based on the book. So no Eddie or Susannah/Odette.

I agree! I'm desperate to know what happened. I need an ending!

I read the book in my late teens, and it had a huge impact on me. The unjustness of it, and the ways that millions of women's lives are unjust - well, it turned me feminist.

Read it with my 13 year old at Easter - the timing of the tv series is amazing.

And...SECOND SERIES? I had no idea!

To explain what I mean a bit more: let's say we learned Offred had been recaptured and killed or sent to the Colonies. (As I mentioned, we know she is never going to see her daughter again, and Luke is plainly dead.) Well, now the story is about the uselessness of resistance and about lies and betrayal. Or let's say she managed to get to a freer country. Well, her story is pretty much over. She might live a quiet life, but it will be a damaged and traumatised one, and now her story is about escape as solution and not the society that created Gilead.

I can understand your desire to know, but I think we have to live with that ambiguity. U think it's essential to the Handmaid's Tale that it's a call to action, and I can't see how it wouldn't have hurt that message to hang it on the random resolution to one woman's story and not the broader picture. But that's me. I love the spitting rage of Atwood's I can feel underneath the academic conference section.

I liked the ending. Offred is the girls in Chibok. She's the enslaved Yazidi women. There are countless Offreds right this very minute, even imagining the unresolved story of one throws some light on their terrible stories.

Oh, and the ending - I thought it was perfect. Her life was miserable, snatching small joys and smaller hopes.

Yes, Under - that's absolutely it - the ending defines the message of the book.