Handmaid's Tale and understatement.
You've read, heard of, or seen The Handmaid's Tale by now. Margaret Atwood's most popular book and most relatable writing for many people across the world. The power hungry, autocratic and theocratic government of Gilead, in order to combat falling birth rates, has reshaped society in order to try and increase the children being born and thus save civilization. Or at least, that's the pretense.
There's so much that's so good about this book, but I want to focus on the opening paragraph of the second chapter. In it, Atwood tells us so much about the world she's created and gives us everything we need to know about the hell our unnamed narrator lives in. Well, her name is Offred, but that's more her status than her name.
Ok, so I consider this to be the opening line, and the previous chapter is more like a prologue. The first chapter does some great world building, but this does some intimate scene setting and very important understatement.
The whole book, Atwood is constantly understating the danger, the fear, the difficulty of Offred's existence. Offred seems to constantly play down the emotional response we'd expect in her situation. This starts right here.
That simple list, no adjective, no descriptions would normally be frowned upon in any creative writing course. "What the hell am I looking at here. Use some imagery!" I can see myself scrawling on this submission. But that's the point: this room has no ornamentation. There is no adjective here. It is blank. The rest of the paragraph has more of the same: "blank space" "white ceiling." As a reader, Atwood doesn't want you to picture anything ornate or special. She want's you to feel the boredom and the emptiness of this space.
These three items are the basics a room might have. But the chair sticks out. Not every room has a chair. Usually you need a chair for work, but most rooms don't have a chair and no desk. To have just a chair indicates a type of single serving room, multi purpose and, in my mind, restrictive. You have the chair so you're not in bed all day, but you don't have a desk to do work at. You have a table. And the table only holds a lamp. This is bare bones. And it is, like I said, based in oppression. You put someone in this room, you don't want them going anywhere else.
We see the relief ornament, like a wreath, and many people may start thinking, finally, some decoration, but it's White and immediately followed with a terrifically violent image. "...a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out." The calm voice you hear this in, uninflected and emotionless, makes this all the more terrifying. It's stated as a normal image to connect. Remember, this narrator is Offred, who's been living under the tyranny of Gilead for a few years now, and is accustomed to its violence. For her, saying "Oh, the ceiling kind of looks like someone popped its eyeball out." so matter of factly isn't terrifying. She's been changed and altered and violence of this kind is normal for her. This also foreshadows a character who has her eyeball taken out as punishment later (earlier?) in the book.
That's the other thing with this line, the eyeball is TAKEN out. Not missing, not lost, taken. That indicates some violence done to someone, not an accident. That makes this all the more terrifying. Finally, the reference to an eye in the sky, or one that used to be there, is a reference to the fact that she is being watched. Or is used to being under surveillance, but possibly this room isn't under surveillance anymore and she is slightly more free here than in other areas of the house. This is highlighted throughout the novel with various references to trying to know the intentions of the other people around her. From the cook to the driver to the wife of the government official she is employed under, Offred constantly worries about who is on her side and who isn't.
Ok, so it goes on to talk about how a chandelier used to be there. That's elegance. You don't really have chandelier's unless you've got some money. So the house she's in must be nice, even if her room is bare. This is solidified later in the book when it's realized the house she's in belongs to one of the higher ups in the Gilead government. The way Atwood tells us about it is clever, too. "There must have been a chandelier, once" placing its existence firmly in the past. The once is an after thought, the past being a time that they are forbidden to talk about in Gilead. Also, the power in saying "must" lends credibility to this narrator. We believe her.
Lastly, that spooky final line. "They've removed anything you could tie a rope to." This hints at, and solidifies what the first chapter establishes, that there is a powerful group who knows that these women in these rooms will try to take their lives. You wonder if they removed the chandelier before or after they found it would be necessary to remove things you could tie a rope to. You wonder if maybe there were a few choices being made that led to some dead handmaid's. You don't get an answer, but you wonder. Only a few lines later in this chapter we see her taking about the type of glass that could create an escape" ...the one you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge."
This paragraph is so dry, so devoid of information, that it borders on uninteresting. However, it's on purpose for tone, and not a byproduct of bad writing. This type of writing takes massive amounts of work and editing. It takes work to have a paragraph this small with this much information.
Go read this book. And also read Atwood's other amazing work, especially, "The Penelopiad." It's the Oddsyey, but from his wife's perspective. Brilliant, and I mean super brilliant, book. I crushed it in three days and loved every second of it.
The whole book, Atwood is constantly understating the danger, the fear, the difficulty of Offred's existence. Offred seems to constantly play down the emotional response we'd expect in her situation. This starts right here.
That simple list, no adjective, no descriptions would normally be frowned upon in any creative writing course. "What the hell am I looking at here. Use some imagery!" I can see myself scrawling on this submission. But that's the point: this room has no ornamentation. There is no adjective here. It is blank. The rest of the paragraph has more of the same: "blank space" "white ceiling." As a reader, Atwood doesn't want you to picture anything ornate or special. She want's you to feel the boredom and the emptiness of this space.
These three items are the basics a room might have. But the chair sticks out. Not every room has a chair. Usually you need a chair for work, but most rooms don't have a chair and no desk. To have just a chair indicates a type of single serving room, multi purpose and, in my mind, restrictive. You have the chair so you're not in bed all day, but you don't have a desk to do work at. You have a table. And the table only holds a lamp. This is bare bones. And it is, like I said, based in oppression. You put someone in this room, you don't want them going anywhere else.
We see the relief ornament, like a wreath, and many people may start thinking, finally, some decoration, but it's White and immediately followed with a terrifically violent image. "...a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out." The calm voice you hear this in, uninflected and emotionless, makes this all the more terrifying. It's stated as a normal image to connect. Remember, this narrator is Offred, who's been living under the tyranny of Gilead for a few years now, and is accustomed to its violence. For her, saying "Oh, the ceiling kind of looks like someone popped its eyeball out." so matter of factly isn't terrifying. She's been changed and altered and violence of this kind is normal for her. This also foreshadows a character who has her eyeball taken out as punishment later (earlier?) in the book.
That's the other thing with this line, the eyeball is TAKEN out. Not missing, not lost, taken. That indicates some violence done to someone, not an accident. That makes this all the more terrifying. Finally, the reference to an eye in the sky, or one that used to be there, is a reference to the fact that she is being watched. Or is used to being under surveillance, but possibly this room isn't under surveillance anymore and she is slightly more free here than in other areas of the house. This is highlighted throughout the novel with various references to trying to know the intentions of the other people around her. From the cook to the driver to the wife of the government official she is employed under, Offred constantly worries about who is on her side and who isn't.
Ok, so it goes on to talk about how a chandelier used to be there. That's elegance. You don't really have chandelier's unless you've got some money. So the house she's in must be nice, even if her room is bare. This is solidified later in the book when it's realized the house she's in belongs to one of the higher ups in the Gilead government. The way Atwood tells us about it is clever, too. "There must have been a chandelier, once" placing its existence firmly in the past. The once is an after thought, the past being a time that they are forbidden to talk about in Gilead. Also, the power in saying "must" lends credibility to this narrator. We believe her.
Lastly, that spooky final line. "They've removed anything you could tie a rope to." This hints at, and solidifies what the first chapter establishes, that there is a powerful group who knows that these women in these rooms will try to take their lives. You wonder if they removed the chandelier before or after they found it would be necessary to remove things you could tie a rope to. You wonder if maybe there were a few choices being made that led to some dead handmaid's. You don't get an answer, but you wonder. Only a few lines later in this chapter we see her taking about the type of glass that could create an escape" ...the one you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge."
This paragraph is so dry, so devoid of information, that it borders on uninteresting. However, it's on purpose for tone, and not a byproduct of bad writing. This type of writing takes massive amounts of work and editing. It takes work to have a paragraph this small with this much information.
Go read this book. And also read Atwood's other amazing work, especially, "The Penelopiad." It's the Oddsyey, but from his wife's perspective. Brilliant, and I mean super brilliant, book. I crushed it in three days and loved every second of it.
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