Atwood contrasts the emotional tale of Offred’s journey with a pompous university lecture which she entitles “The Historical Notes”

She uses the character of Pieixoto to represent a sexist historian who dehumanises the Tale to antagonise the reader in order to convince them not to distance themselves form social injustices in the way that Pieixoto does (“We must be careful about passing moral judgement on the Gileadans … our job is not to censure but to understand” pg 315)

Pieixoto’s ignorant and dehumanising interpretation of Offerd’s Tale is a parody of the historic academic discourse in which the individual is forgotten and the masculine takes precedence over the feminine.

One of the purposes of H.N is to make the reader aware that the events depicted in the novel are actually possible, and even the name of the lecture site serves this purpose: “the University of Denay, Nunavit,” or “deny none of it”

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Atwood said that “[she did] not put anything into [the novel] that human societies have not already done”. This lends itself to the way in which the novel illustrates the social injustices that the human species is capable of. At one point in the novel Offred recounts, how as a child she watched a documentary on the Nazi guard, and goes on to explain that she made the horror witness bareable by repeating: “it was only a story. If it’s only a story, it becomes less frightening” (pg 1something). Atwood went on to articulate that it was important to realise that history was not just a ‘story’ it is real events, and the recognition of this is important so that we may recognise current and possible injustices.

The notion that having an emotional element to the truth, it cannot be objective, but through the H.N, Atwood challenges this by suggesting that the whole truth is not served if all emotion is removed from the equation, and that human emotions help us to understand the truth, and perhaps connect with it on a higher and more engaging level.

The juxtaposition between narrative and historical documentation is created by the addition of the H.N. Readers can engage and connect with a narrative and the characters portrayed within the narrative, whereas an objective and emotionless historical account removes the notion of the individual, henceforth making it easy for the reader to distance themselves from the story.

In a lecture on writing Canadian historical fiction, Atwood stated that “whoever tells you that history is not about individuals, only about large trends and movements, is lying.” This is articulated through the character of Pieixoto, who makes it clear that history is about facts, stats, and figures – he is only interested in verifying facts and statistics, and shows no interest in Offred as an individual. Through this, Atwood uses Pieixoto to satirize this perspective of history.

Pieixoto undermines the purpose of Offred’s story by demanding that impart ‘important’ facts about the Gileadean society (“She could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she had the instincts of a reporter or a spy” [page 322]), ignoring the finer details that Offred wished to make important. Pieixoto is disappointed that she didn’t give up what happened to her in the end, who she really was, and all of the other details that he wanted to know, “our document, though in its own way eloquent, is on these subjects mute” page 324). Pieixoto claims Offred’s story and, through an emotionless reading, fails to ask the right questions of it, concerning himself with his own needs rather than the need of the author, through this we can see that Offred, even in death, is being silenced by the patriarchy – her only freedom had been appropriated by a male, so much so that her story had been turned into his story.

Pieixoto expresses his resentment for the story of the individual, claiming that Offred’s tale is too fragmented to actually claim any pertinent information about Gilead. He claims that changes in society make it the past unclear: “As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.” (pg. 324). Atwood critiques the removal of the individual, claiming that it is how we understand the past (through others’ experiences) and that Pieixoto is unable to understand the complexities of human history due to his singleminded focus on facts, foregoing any other means of understand.

Pieixoto approaches The Handmaid’s Tale as if it is a historical document, concerned only with the verification of the facts held within it, whereas readers who approached the text as a fictional document are unconcerned with verification and are occupied wholly with Offred’s journey and the impact that the Tale has on them in terms of emotion. Offred goes on to verify her tale by saying, on page 280 “After all, you’ve been through, you deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but includes the truth” admits that the story is somewhat true, wether it be through the lesson gained by the reader, or the emotional ties that have been forged with the reader and the persona.

Atwood portrays Pieixoto in a very negative light, along with the society that he operates in, primarily through his use of sexist jokes (which seem to be accepted) suggesting that females are seen as inferior in this newer, supposedly cleansed society. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” he says that “…all puns were intentional, particularly that having to do with the archaic vulgar signification of the word tail; that being, to some extent, the bone, as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society” (page 313). Despite their arrogant view of their society’s superiority, these historians do not really come from an advanced or progressive society. The historians who discuss the tale at the end of the novel distance themselves from the story itself and are reluctant to pass judgment on the regime’s actions, with Pieixoto saying: “We must be cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadeans. Surely we have learned by now that such judgments are of necessity culture-specific. Also, Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free. Our job is not to censure but to understand.” (page 314-5). Atwood satirises the concept of not judging the past, and suggests that moral relativism is just an excuse to avoid trying to contemplate such a complex issue. The Gileadian regime enforces laws that strip women of their independence and rights. Women are no longer allowed to own property, earn money, keep a bank account, make reproductive choices, or read. Atwood contends that this treatment of women is unjust, and that it is always possible to judge right and wrong.

Aside from refraining to pass judgement on Gilead, Pieixoto seems to admire it’s government tactics somewhat claiming that “it’s genius was synthesis” (page 319). His admiration of the ingenuity of the Gileadean regime makes it seem as though he approves the various horrid acts that were committed within the reign of the Gileadean government.

The Historical Notes in The Handmaid’s Tale are used to illustrate the failings of the purely objective study of history, urging the importance of stories in giving us a better understanding of complex events. It is common practice to distance oneself from the past as it is just that, the past, but Atwood challenges this by claiming that by bringing the events of the past into our minds on an emotional level, we can extrapolate the past events to a further extent, allowing us to see with greater knowledge the possibilities of social injustices.