Lets talk about the ending...

[Jane]

Did Gilead thrive and prosper after time past? The ending made me wonder if the historian was speaking of an interesting time in North America which is no more...or if they spoke of a rebellious age in the existing Republic of Gilead.

[Kandice]

I think it was left open ended so we could decide for ourselves.

[Mary]

I guess I am a sucker for a happy ending, so in some ways I do hope that her family is reunited.

[Holly]

I believe that the academics discussing Offred's story made references to the fall of Gilead. It seems as though the epilogue took place maybe 200 years after the events in the book.

[Florin]

Everything seems a bit ambiguous, but the USA became Gilead, right? So the border Offred and her family were travelling towards was Canada.

The conference was being held in Canada, so understandable that the tape (critical of Gilead) can be studied, but then what of the reference to the Republic of Texas? That suggests to me that Gilead had at least broken down.

[Maree]

This is my favorite Margaret Atwood book and is still one of my top ten most special to me. It is so unique. MI have read many of her books since this one and she has a way of just diving into the story and not explaining. The ending leaves a lot to the imagination. If she wasn't such a great writer it would be terrible, but she gets away with it nicely, I think.

[Mary]

Maree wrote: "This is my favorite Margaret Atwood book and is still one of my top ten most special to me. It is so unique. MI have read many of her books since this one and she has a way of just diving into the ..."

I just didn't care how vauge this was, including the ending.

[Holly]

Florian wrote: "Everything seems a bit ambiguous, but the USA became Gilead, right? So the border Offred and her family were travelling towards was Canada.

The conference was being held in Canada, so understandab..."

Knowing Texans, I imagine they seceded at the very beginning and were always a Republic separate from Gilead.

[Jane]

Thank you everyone for your input. The ending was definitely a interesting one, and I will probably always go back to pondering what really happened when consider what I had taken away from the book.

[John]

What made this book outstanding for me was the gut level sense of Offred's reality Atwood created. Our real world is full of ambiguities, and for someone such as Offred, held without access to any real or certain information, absolutely everything was ambiguous and therefore doubly terrifying. Detail after detail goes half explained or left entirely to our imaginations as it was to Offred's.

The ending was magnificent because it made us experience the same unknowing Offred had to feel when she stepped into the van. Leaving her ultimate fate unknown was necessary to allow us to see how she herself approached her fate.

[Vanessa]

I have read this book 3 times and I always wish that there would be a part 2, where we learn of Offred's fate and if she was reunited with her little girl.

[Sparrowlicious]

The thing probably self-destructed. The clue? Someone who studies caucasian culture. No one would ever do this if 'caucasian' was still a living ethnicity.
No idea what happened to Europe, though. It's really weird how in dystopians that take place in the US no one ever mentions Europe.
We're too stubborn about every country being one country and not a piece of a huge megacountry so that dystopian scenarios don't work so well over here.

Anyway, I also hope Offred at least got away. Even if she never met her daughter or husband again.
It's the sort of ending that leaves everything up to the reader, really.