Offred
Offred is the narrator and a Handmaid assigned to the Commander’s household.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeOffred is the narrator and a Handmaid assigned to the Commander’s household. She wants to survive and retain some connection to Luke, her daughter, and the person she was before Gilead. Her resistance is uneven: she hoards words, accepts risky meetings, helps Ofglen only cautiously, and becomes attached to Nick. She enters a van at the end. Her real name and final fate remain unknown in the novel.
If you like The Handmaid's Tale
If you like Margaret Atwood
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Simone de Beauvoir
French writer and philosopher whose novels, memoirs, and social analysis examined freedom, gender, responsibility, aging, and the material conditions that shape a life.
View author
Claude McKay
Jamaican-born poet and novelist, and one of the essential writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He arrived in Paris from Moscow in 1923 and stayed in France until 1928, writing Home to Harlem there — and forming a low opinion of the rich, white expatriate scene that dominates most accounts of the period. His Paris is the same years as Hemingway's and almost nothing like it.
View author
Henry Miller
The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.
View author