ENG201S NIJNENS

              As I continued reading, I picked up more on the setting of the book. The setting is in Gilead, it is known as the "New America".  The setting is mainly in the house where the maids work. The setting reveals the main problems in the work. The city is unfair to women, the people in the town see women strictly as baby makers. The job of females in Gilead is to conceive and bear children. Gilead is under a totalitarian regime, therefore, the government is allowed to have control over what the females do.  Imagery is used to show the difference between the world in Gilead and the world the women are living in. More specifically, in chapter three, the author writes, "the tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they have been cut and are beginning to heal there". The quote allows the reader to conclude that Gilead strips women from their  innocence and abuses their ability to reproduce.

   After reading the first few chapters of the book, the author has caught my attention.  I personally enjoyed the beginning of the book because it was different than regular stories these days. The book has a flare to it because it is old-fasioned. The first few chapters revealed a lot for the reader. Margaret Atwood introduces the main character, Offred, in the first chapter of the book. Offred, the narrator of the novel, has an interesting role. Offred has purpose to be in the play for a list of reasons. For instance, Offred is in the house due to the sexual benefits she offers. The first chapter offers insight into her living conditions. She sleeps on a cot with several other females on the gymnasium floor. The cots they sleep on are the same cots that the old army members slept on. I found it interesting how they all sleep on the cots in the gym because it shows how awful their living conditions were and how poorly they were treated. The fact they were not even given real beds to

I decided to read the book, The Handmaid's Tale , by Margaret Atwood. A handmaid is a personal maid or servant. I anticipate that the novel will be the personal  story of a maid. I think the story will have a strong message about perseverance because maids are very consist and determined to complete all their tasks to the fullest extent. I can't personally connect with the title because I am not a maid and I never had a maid, but from television shows and movies I can conclude that they work extremely hard regardless of what is thrown their way.