The Handmaid's Tale
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167 free The Handmaid's Tale trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free The Handmaid's Tale trivia questions with answers. Are you a devoted fan of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale? Put your knowledge to the test with our comprehensive trivia quiz covering characters, storylines, and unforgettable moments from the novel and acclaimed TV adaptation. Whether you're familiar with Gilead from the books or the Hulu series, discover how well you really know this dystopian masterpiece.
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Q 01Since they may not read, what do Handmaids hand over at the shops to pay for food?
Tokens printed with pictures
Tokens printed with pictures: each one shows what it buys, twelve eggs or a piece of cheese, and even the shop names have been painted out, leaving only signs such as a golden lily.
Q 02What do the Japanese tourists ask Offred and Ofglen through an interpreter in the street?
Are you happy?
'Are you happy?' is the tourists' question; Ofglen stays silent, so Offred murmurs 'Yes, we are very happy', because not answering could be just as dangerous.
Q 03What is the primary color of the uniform worn by Handmaids in Gilead?
Red
Red marks the Handmaids: Atwood took it from the blood of childbirth and from Mary Magdalene, adding drily that red is also easier to see if you happen to be fleeing.
Q 04In the novel's opening scene, the women being trained as Handmaids sleep on army cots in what kind of place?
A former school gymnasium
A former school gymnasium: basketball hoops still hang over the cots, and the women, forbidden to talk, learn to lip-read so they can pass their real names from bed to bed.
Q 05What does the Gilead chain Soul Scrolls sell, mostly to Commanders' Wives who order by phone?
Machine-printed prayers
Machine-printed prayers roll out of printers the Handmaids call Holy Rollers and are pulped once recited; ordering them is a show of piety that helps a husband's career, so the Wives order plenty.
Q 06What activity does the Commander secretly engage in with Offred that is forbidden for women?
Playing Scrabble
Playing Scrabble is the forbidden pastime: women in Gilead may not read, so the word games in the Commander's study are a real transgression, rewarded with old magazines and hand lotion.
Q 07What does Gilead call the infertile or disobedient women it ships to the Colonies?
Unwomen
Unwomen is also Aunt Lydia's word for the feminists of the time before; in the worst Colonies they clear toxic dumps and radiation spills, with three years at most to live.
Q 08In The Handmaid's Tale, Offred's shopping partner Ofglen belongs to which underground resistance network working to overthrow Gilead?
Mayday
Mayday is also the network's password: Ofglen says it shows 'who is and who isn't', admits she once tried it on Offred, and warns her to use it only when she has to.
Q 09In the novel The Handmaid's Tale, what was Serena Joy's public role before Gilead?
A televangelist
A televangelist: in the novel Serena Joy sang lead soprano on the Growing Souls Gospel Hour, then made speeches urging women to stay home, a rule Gilead has now imposed on her.
Q 10What does the mock-Latin phrase 'Nolite te bastardes carborundorum', found by Offred, mean?
Don't let them grind you down
Don't let them grind you down: the mock Latin means 'don't let the bastards grind you down', a schoolboy joke scratched in Offred's cupboard by the previous Handmaid, who learned it from the Commander.
Q 11Which novelist did Atwood call 'a direct model' for The Handmaid's Tale?
Orwell
Orwell: Atwood began the book in the real 1984 and published it the next year, saying she wanted to try a dystopia told from the female point of view, as Winston Smith's lover Julia might have seen it.
Q 12What does Gilead call the women who cook and clean in Commanders' households?
Marthas
Marthas also run Gilead's unofficial news network, passing gossip from house to house: a stillbirth here, a Wife who stabbed her Handmaid with a knitting needle there. Offred longs to join in.
Q 13Which biblical story is often cited to justify the role of Handmaids in Gilead?
Rachel and Bilhah
Q 21What is the role of 'Econowives' in Gilead?
Wives of lower-ranking, non-elite men
Wives of lower-ranking, non-elite men: Econowives are married to Gilead's poorer men and get no servants or Handmaids, so one woman has to be wife, cook and child-bearer all at once.
Q 22What forbidden treat does Serena Joy give Offred after proposing a secret way to get her pregnant?
A cigarette
A cigarette, plus leave to ask the cook for a single match: Offred thinks of hiding the match in her mattress instead, since with it she could burn the house down.
Q 23After each secret evening in his study, what does the Commander ask Offred to give him?
A kiss
Rachel and Bilhah: the barren Rachel tells her husband to father children on her maid, a passage the Commander reads aloud from a Bible kept locked in a box, since women may be read to but not read.
Q 14What color uniform do the 'Wives' of Commanders wear?
Blue
Blue is the Wives' colour, a nod to the Virgin Mary's traditional blue robes in Christian art; Serena Joy wears it throughout the novel.
Q 15What does Offred hide from her dinner tray to rub into her skin, since Handmaids are allowed no lotion?
A pat of butter
A pat of butter goes into the toe of her spare shoe until night; the Wives ruled out hand cream so the Handmaids would not look attractive, and the trick is one the women pick up in training.
Q 16What is the primary reason for the strict social stratification and control over women in Gilead?
To combat mass infertility
To combat mass infertility: Gilead's birth rate has collapsed, which Atwood ties to radiation, chemical pollution and sexually transmitted disease, so fertile women are conscripted as Handmaids.
Q 17What does Gilead call the ritual in which Handmaids are incited to beat a condemned man to death?
Particicution
Particicution ends the Women's Salvaging: at Aunt Lydia's whistle the Handmaids set on a man they are told is a rapist; Ofglen whispers that he was 'a political' and kicks him unconscious as a mercy.
Q 18What colour do the cooks and maids in Commanders' households wear?
Green
Green, the dull green of a surgeon's gown, is the household servants' colour; Offred overhears the cook who wears it saying she 'wouldn't debase herself' the way a Handmaid must.
Q 19In The Handmaid's Tale, what do the women call the place where they are re-educated for life as Handmaids?
The Red Center
The Red Center is the women's own nickname for it, 'because there was so much red'; in its Testifying sessions they are made to chant that a classmate's assault was her own fault.
Q 20What does the phrase 'Under His Eye' signify in Gilead?
A warning that all is watched
A warning that all is watched: 'Under His Eye' is Gilead's standard farewell, a reminder that God and the state are always looking, so citizens learn to keep watch on themselves.
A kiss: 'Not like that,' he says the first time, 'as if you meant it'; Offred, braced for something far worse, is struck instead by how sad he seems.
Q 24Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is best known for exploring which theme?
Women's subjugation and lost autonomy
Women's subjugation and lost autonomy drive the plot, yet Atwood bristled when critics called it a feminist tract: 'novels are not slogans', she said, describing it as a study of power and how it deforms people.
Q 25In the novel The Handmaid's Tale, what becomes of the first Ofglen whom Offred meets?
She kills herself before arrest
She kills herself before arrest: the new Ofglen tells Offred her predecessor hanged herself when she saw the black van coming for her, rather than be taken and interrogated.
Q 26What is the primary function of the 'Eyes of the Lord' in Gilead?
To act as secret police and spies
To act as secret police and spies: the Eyes of the Lord seize suspects off the street into black vans marked with a winged eye, and anyone might be one, so Offred reads even a friendly wink as a possible test.
Q 27What does Gilead call the women who entertain officers at its secret, state-run club?
Jezebels
Jezebels work at a club in a former hotel, open only to officers, senior officials and foreign trade delegations; it is strictly forbidden, the Commander concedes, but only 'officially'.
Q 28In which Massachusetts city, around an old university campus, is the novel The Handmaid's Tale set?
Cambridge
Cambridge: Atwood set Gilead in the home of Harvard because the liberal university began life as a Puritan seminary, and her regime is built on those seventeenth-century Puritan roots.
Q 29Where in Gilead are the bodies of the executed hung on public display?
The Wall
The Wall, once Harvard's, is where bodies hang with bags over their heads and placards showing the crime, such as a drawing of a foetus for doctors who performed abortions when they were legal.
Q 30In the Hulu series, what is the name of June's daughter, taken from her when the family is caught fleeing?
Hannah
Hannah is taken because Gilead voids her parents' marriage: Luke had been divorced, so June is branded an adulteress and the girl is handed to a Commander's family; the novel never names her.