Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

This study examines The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019) by Margaret Atwood in terms of a trauma narrative. Offred, main narrator of The Handmaid’s Tale, feels “great relief”, when she knows that Ofglen, a member of Mayday which aims to overthrow Gilead, commits suicide without revealing her relationship with Offred. Her relief, however, is followed by her sense of guilt, which leads to survival’s trauma. Consequently, Offred tries to tell an imaginary listener her traumatic experience as an attempt to transform her traumatic experience into a narrative, since narration can cure trauma whose devastating effects derives from its unnarratibility. The Handmaid’s Tale, the outcome of Offred’s traumatic experiences, is, in this respect, a trauma narrative which demands to be told and witnessed, thus taking on social aspects. Social aspect of a trauma narrative is more emphasized in The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Lydia, who works as “overseer” for Gilead, is obliged to kill her colleague Anita to survive. Tormented by the sense of guilt, and disgusted with the dictatorship of Gilead, Lydia supplies critical information to the Mayday as an attempt to overthrow Gilead, while recording her activities as well as the evil doings of Gilead’s elites. Owing to her scandalous information about Gilead’s elites, Gilead is finally brought down by a military coup. Lydia’s writing, in this sense, is a testament of her traumatic experiences as well as a completion of the social testimony which Atwood started in The Handmaid’s Tale.