The Handmaid's Tale Summary and Complete Study Guide

Serena discovers the Commander's violations of his own rules and is furious. The resistance arrives in a van to extract Offred, but she doesn't know if it's really the resistance or the secret police. The book ends ambiguously—we don't know if she escapes. An epilogue set centuries later shows scholars discussing Gilead as ancient history, revealing it did eventually fall. Atwood's warning? Women's rights can be stripped away frighteningly fast when religious extremism meets political power. Every element of Gilead is based on something that's actually happened somewhere in history. She's showing how quickly society can regress, how people rationalize participation in oppression, and how normalizing the abnormal happens gradually until it's too late. It remains relevant because the threats it depicts never fully disappear.

Published 1985, won multiple awards. The Hulu series (2017) brought renewed attention. Sales spiked during political events. A feminist dystopian classic.