Abstracts Category : Other

The Necessity of Telling Her Story. Narrative Veracity in Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale

by Dnal Huw Gaynor

This thesis discusses Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale from the point of view of narratorial reliability. Using Shlomith Rimmon-Kenans Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics as a starting point and building on this with Greta Olsens Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators and Per Krogh Hansens Reconsidering the Unreliable Narrator the main character of The Handmaids Tale, Offred, is assessed. By examining her reliability from the point of view of intranarrational unreliability, internarrational unreliability, intertextual unreliability and extratextual unreliability it is established that Offred is a fallible but reliable narrator. Fallibility is about her ability to be incorrect, as a first-person narrator she does not have access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of other characters. This inability to know the thoughts of others makes her fallible. Her emotional honesty and the clarity with which she highlights her own fallibility make her a reliable narrator. Offred tells the story she needs to tell. The essential honesty of needing to tell the story is what makes her reliable. The epilogue is narrated by Professor Pieixoto who is found to be a far less reliable narrator. He does not contradict the facts of the Offreds story instead he fails to pass the test of being a narrator who speaks to the morality of the implied reader of the The Handmaids Tale. This failure to speak to the truth of Offreds tale makes him far less reliable from the readers perspective. The essay concludes that Offred is to be considered reliable precisely because she is telling the story she needs to tell and not telling a story that focuses on scientific accuracy. Keywords: Narratorial Reliability, Fallible narrator, The Handmaids Tale, Offred, intranarrational unreliability, internarrational unreliability, intertextual unreliability, extratextual unreliability, Margaret Atwood.