Motifs In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

A motif in The Handmaid's Tale is the color red and Handmaids in Gilead wear red. The biggest and obvious example is the Red Center where handmaids are trained. Red symbolizes oppression since the women are being forced to become handmaids. The great thing about literature is everything is up for interpretation, therefore red could mean various things. Salvagings take place by The Wall, which is described on pg. 31 as red brick. The red brick wall is where men and women who “disobey” the law is persecuted. One of the doctors that had been hanged had blood near his mouth, “But on one bag there's blood, which has seeped through the white cloth, where the mouth must have been. It makes another mouth, a small red one”(Atwood 32). In this instance,