Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never
explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town
of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts
as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant
society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds
us of this history with the ancient Puritan church that Offred and
Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a
museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct
link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both
groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation.
Harvard University
Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention
center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed
dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and
Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the
steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world
that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and
truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every
principle for which a university is supposed to stand.
The Handmaids’ Red Habits
The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility,
which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of
the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however,
red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back
to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive
role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense
they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are
married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel
the pain of this sanctioned adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments,
then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids’
position in Gilead.
A Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been
scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its
place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing
simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center
as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead.
The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially,
by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse
the new world.
The Eyes
The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their
name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness
of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye
of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.
