25 Discussion Questions for The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (With Analysis) | Chapterly Blog
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is one of the most discussed novels of the past forty years, and its cultural impact has only grown since its publication. The Handmaid's Tale discussion questions push readers to examine how totalitarian systems exploit gender, how religious language can be weaponized, and how resistance persists even in the most oppressive conditions. Whether you are in a gender studies course, a college literature seminar, or a book club, these questions will generate serious, substantive conversation. Published in 1985, the novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship that has replaced the United States. Women are stripped of their rights and sorted into categories based on their usefulness — Wives, Marthas, and Handmaids, the last of whom are forced to bear children for the ruling class. The story is told by Offred, a Handmaid who remembers the world before. Atwood has said that nothing in the novel is invented — every element has a historical precedent. These 25 questions are organized by theme. The Handmaid's Tale Discussion Questions: Power, Control, and the State Atwood constructs Gilead as a regime that maintains power not through brute force alone but through a sophisticated architecture of...