Past experiences have many different effects on the way they influence people, whether they are good or bad. Although some experiences we go through may be hard to endure, we can not let it keep us from being who we really are. In this novel, Atwood uses many different devices such as internal conflict, flashbacks, and internal dialogue to show that no matter how traumatizing past experiences may be, we can not use that as an excuse to be the way we are. Atwood uses the past experiences of the narrator to create the root of the internal conflict the narrator undergoes. For example, having a forced abortion is one of the reasons why she is mentally scarred. The narrator vividly explains the procedure and what it feels like to have it being performed on her. She states, “They stick needles into you so you won’t hear anything, you might as well be a dead pig, your legs are up in a metal frame, they bend over you, technicians, mechanics, butchers, students clumsy or sniggering practising on your body, they take the baby out with a fork like a pickle out of a pickle jar” (Page 88). The way she explicitly describes the procedure shows that it left a permanent impression …show more content…
Whenever she is in an uncomfortable situation, she always looks back to the fictional past she creates for herself. In one article it states “Atwood uses flashbacks to build the narrator’s past, a past so traumatic to the narrator’s mind that she can only think of it in fleeing moments, never truly grasping the meaning until the end, until she finds herself underneath a web of lies and painful truths” (Superblinky.com). It is also evident that she makes up her own version of the past when she makes some references to her “former husband” which, in reality, was her professor whom she had an affair with which then caused her pregnancy which then caused her