The Handmaid's Tale - Quotation Marks

[GilliC]

I just finished The Handmaid's Tale, and I was wondering if I was the only one who didn't catch on to the meaning of the quotation marks (or absence thereof) when reading the novel?

At first I thought she just wasn't using them, but at some point in the book I noticed that they were suddenly there. I thought it might have been a problem with the digital version, but when I compared the transition I'd noticed to a hard copy, it was the same. In doing the comparison, I noticed that the book actually switched back and forth more than once (doing so as early as the second chapter), and I started browsing through the book to see the changes in punctuation.

Am I correct in my current understanding that anything happening in realtime as the story unfolds is indicated with quotation marks, and anything that happened earlier and is simply being related after the fact is stated without?

Please tell me I'm not the only one who didn't pick up on this as she was reading!

I did notice the line around halfway through that said, "It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact..." [Ch 23, pg 134] I thought this was just a general explanation of the lack of quote marks, because I hadn't noticed by that point that they were coming and going. (I guess quotation marks are like so many things in that you only notice them when once they're gone!)

[PinkSquirrel]

I didn't notice at all. Now I'm going to have to go back and take a second look

[imoan]

I just finished reading this a few weeks back (second reading) and I didn't notice this either. GREAT observation!

[sam20]

Jun 1, 2012 22:40:51 GMT -5 PinkSquirrel said:

I didn't notice at all. Now I'm going to have to go back and take a second look

Glad to know I"m not the only one that didn't notice. I noticed that there were no quotation marks but never really noticed when she did use quotation marks.

[apelila]

Huh... I didn't notice that when I read it either. Now I want to read it again to see if I interpret the story any differently!

[GilliC]

Jun 3, 2012 21:53:55 GMT -5 apelila said:

Huh... I didn't notice that when I read it either. Now I want to read it again to see if I interpret the story any differently!

I don't think it really affects the story, since you can already figure out when she's jumped back to retell an earlier event. Although since she uses a mix of present and past tense in the flashback scenes, it might make it a little clearer when it's no longer the current timeline.

[apelila]

Ah, okay, thanks GilliC. Maybe I'll just save my valuable reading time for the many books I haven't read even once yet!

[duckduck]

I actually didn't notice it much. Every once in a while I would notice the presence of quotation marks, but I didn't pick up on any significance to them.

I think that part of it might have to do with the fact that in the afterword or whatever you want to call it they state that the "document" is actually the transcription of a spoken narration found on cassette tapes. So maybe the presence/absence of quotation marks is supposed to indicate conservative transcription, i.e. not wanting to impose punctuation when it wasn't 100% clear that it was intended to be there?

[GilliC]

Jun 4, 2012 12:28:58 GMT -5 duckduck said:

I think that part of it might have to do with the fact that in the afterword or whatever you want to call it they state that the "document" is actually the transcription of a spoken narration found on cassette tapes. So maybe the presence/absence of quotation marks is supposed to indicate conservative transcription, i.e. not wanting to impose punctuation when it wasn't 100% clear that it was intended to be there?

But wouldn't that imply that she would have been recording her actual conversations while she was still in the Commander's house? They also said in the afterward that she almost certainly recorded the story after the fact, because she would not have had access to the equipment (which also implies that it's her voice narrating the entire thing, and thus all quotations would have been filtered through her memory of them).

[duckduck]

Jun 4, 2012 13:19:29 GMT -5 GilliC said:

Jun 4, 2012 12:28:58 GMT -5 duckduck said:

I think that part of it might have to do with the fact that in the afterword or whatever you want to call it they state that the "document" is actually the transcription of a spoken narration found on cassette tapes. So maybe the presence/absence of quotation marks is supposed to indicate conservative transcription, i.e. not wanting to impose punctuation when it wasn't 100% clear that it was intended to be there?

But wouldn't that imply that she would have been recording her actual conversations while she was still in the Commander's house? They also said in the afterward that she almost certainly recorded the story after the fact, because she would not have had access to the equipment (which also implies that it's her voice narrating the entire thing, and thus all quotations would have been filtered through her memory of them).

Right, all quotations/statements/whatever would have been recalled by her after the fact. I was just hypothesizing that maybe there were some audible cues-- shifting her voice deeper for the men, for example-- that could imply that some statements were intended to be closer to the word-for-word original.

I am obviously just guessing here. Like I said, I barely noticed the quotation marks or lack thereof as I was reading through.

[SallyJ]

I don't recall quotations/non-quotations while I was reading it...might have to go back and look. Is it as simple as the quotations are to depict actual dialogue vs thoughts/feelings. It has been a long while since I've read the book, but I remember getting the sense that not much actual dialogue happened.