Symbols In The Handmaid's Tale

There are symbols that are important throughout the story: the washtub and farm, the white cloth, and the clothier/ man with the cloth. To start, the farm is an important symbol, as it sets the scene of a rural community, where strangers are almost as kindly taken to as their neighbours down the road. The washtub may sound like an odd choice for this literary theory, but it reveals to the reader around the time the story would have taken place. With this information, we can deduce that this would have been in a time that electricity wasn’t very common out in the rural communities, and before the time when items like washing machines were readily available. The significance of this is that it sets up how the social world works out there, as during this time

The clothier states in the story that the cloth could only be bought with love, but the symbol is much deeper than that. He defines love as the kind of love experienced between the closest friends, between a man and his wife, and between parents and a child. This gives the reader a deeper understanding of the value of this cloth, as only a deep love can ever buy this cloth. The wife and husband go on to explain about the times they have loved, like the love the wife had for her cat, how the couple love each other though they are infertile, and they also offer him some kindness in return, giving him water, and telling him they didn’t wish to take more than they could pay for. When they ask for only 8 yards, yet they receive six fold and two yards extra, you begin to see how much love they really have. Finally, we have the clothier himself, who is a symbol of “the experience of the other”. He may represent a person like someone from the Salvation Army or a charity, where by them giving their kindness, he too can give that kindness to someone else. When the couple treats him with kindness, and the couple explain about their love, he takes it and gives it back in