Warning contains spoilers, if you’re planning to, or didn’t finish watching the handmaid’s tale on Hulu, then stop reading now.
Hulu’s Emmy award winning The Handmaid’s Tale is an adaptation of the classic novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a dystopian future where less women are fertile meaning they can’t give birth. The Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state has replaced the United States of America. Because of the infertile women the commanders of Gilead are “forced” to take extreme measures and “take care” of the women who are unable to bear children. They do this by first overthrowing the government by holding secret meetings and off the books trade. Once they do this they take away all women rights, being a female in Gilead means you have no rights to anything not even your own body. Then they abducted all of the women who are able to give birth and force them to become a handmaid. Offred is the handmaid of Fred and Serena. Offred is not her given name, the “of” means “I am of” and depending on who your commander it changes. In Offred’s case it’s “I am of fred” and her given name is june. June goes through many stages throughout the series. When we first meet her she is running away from the “eye” to Canada with her daughter and husband. Unfortunately she does not escape instead her husband is implied to be dead and her child is taken away from her. She was put into a camp where she is trained with the other handmaids to be obedient and to not go against what she is told. They are shown how to properly participate in the ceremony. While at the camp, June tries to escape with her friend Mori “From the before” to the north and once again she doesn’t make it far as she is stopped by the eye when she is about to board the train. On the other hand Mori escapes and they do not reunite with her until much later in the future. June is assigned her house and this is when her name changes. Her time at the house was unpleasant to say the least. She is to do the shopping and stay out of the way and nothing else until she is told otherwise. One of her duties being to participate in the ceremony. In the ceremony she is raped by the commander in hopes that a child would be born. The ceremony begins with reading the bible then Offred being placed between Serena’s legs and Serena holding her hands down “this is in order for them to become one” this is being done as the commander “ready himself” when he is ready the women should be in place and the he begins the ceremony. The ceremony is spouse to be the only connect that offred has with the commander they aren’t by law aloud to interact if the lady of the house is not present. But like all good books or shows this does not happen. When the commander sent Nick the driver and potential love interest of offred to meet him at his office at 9. Offered was conflicted she was unsure of what to do this is the second time we see a major change in her. Being able to go throw her mindset wither she should go or not and then ultimately going even if nobody was allowed to look let alone step in it his office not even serena had gone in there. Being unsure of what awaited her, she knocked on his doors at 9. She went in they played scrabble. They would continue do this every night but one night offred ask if he knew Latin. This was another major change because she started to wonder what happen to her predecessor and why did she leave that message behind in the bottom of the closet. This answer some of her question on what happen to the original offred and got her some power over the commander even if she was oblivious to it. This power just grew stronger and stronger, she gains awareness of this power when they go to jezebels and meets with her friend mori. When they reunite mori tells her the story of how she got there and how she lost her hope to escape.
this encourages offered to fight against the system. She later joins the residence we she got access to by her fellow handmaid ofglen she would do small things like try to get information and tell ofglen. But when ofglen went missing she lost all hope she had no regard for her safety taking up Serena offer in having sexual relations with Nick in order to have a child. It wasn’t until much latter in the series when the state had a meeting with the president of Mexico. They were trading the girls for goods and she saw this as she chance to tell them every to let the world know what was happening there. She did she told the president and her adviser everything from the rape to the torture. This did nothing because Mexico was going through the same problem. However, this did eventually get her to officially join the resentacice because the adviser was part of it sending a message to luke offered husband who she believed was dead. This was one of the biggest change in character she became June again she promised herself no matter what she would make it out.
