“It didn’t Happen that Way”: The Role of Narrative Inconsistencies in Margaret Atwood’s Dystopia the Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of narrative inconsistencies in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) applying the constructivist model proposed by Meir Sternberg and Tamar Yacobi (2015) in their discussion about narrative (un)reliability. The analysis suggests that the inconsistencies which arise when Offred’s narration and the novel’s epilogue—a transcript of an academic symposium taking place in 2195—are juxtaposed have a specific purpose in the novel. This purpose can be identified through the application of two mechanisms of sense-making proposed by Sternberg and Yacobi: the one concerned with the specific perspective adopted in a narrative and the one related to the thematic goals of the text— its function. Thinking of the novel as a communicative act, we explore the ways in which it engages with the notions of both despair and hope which are imbricated in dystopian writing.