‘It’s All a Circle’
Miller expresses disdain at the idea that June could have embarked on something as ordinary as the hero’s journey. He comments, “It’s overplayed. Everyone is so fixated on it.” He finds it more fitting when there were annual plays in Athens. Over the last decade, Miller and Moss have spent countless hours discussing this one character, generally finding common ground in their perspectives. Neither of them wanted to constrain her with genre expectations, such as making it an epic or a romance. For Miller, it couldn’t be an epic with a moral at its core, while for Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale” was not June’s story in the romantic sense: “That wasn’t her journey.” Our conversation delved into the grim yet touching space they arrived at instead, where June is portrayed as courageous, isolated, and unwilling to abandon the struggle.