Handmaid's Tale - Passage Analysis

In the first several paragraphs of Chapter 2 of the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood uses very dreary language and short, uninteresting sentences to convey a hopeless and depressing tone.  This tone matches perfectly with the subjects of these paragraphs.

The speaker begins by describing the room she occupies.  The descriptions – as well as the things within the room – are very uninteresting and dull.  These paragraphs are constructed with the most basic of sentences, giving a feeling of overpowering stillness and emptiness to the room.  This stillness gives the speaker a sense of desperation, as the only thing that she can do to break the stillness is to put her hands into the light.  Atwood does a terrific job of expressing the speaker’s emotions and forcing the reader to empathize; when she states that there is no glass covering pictures and nowhere to han a rope, the reader understands toward what she is hinting.  Moreover, the tone of the passage makes the reader wish that the room did contain glass, or ceiling fixtures.

The type of tone that the author expresses is doubly effective because she expresses the speaker’s discomfort in a very uncomfortable way.  Her use of language conveys the same feelings in the reader as what the speaker is feeling, herself.