The Handmaid's Tale seems to be written in a very pessimistic point of view throughout the entire novel but to me it seems to have a bit of hope in there when talking to the reader which leads me to believe the she did escape, or at least as much as she could, from Gilead. But when referring back to the scientists in the future they mention that she never came out with her story and they speculated that she did so to protect her family which would make sense but there still seems to be something missing from it all. Why take the time to record those tapes and not take them with her? Perhaps she left them for another refuge to come to the safe house she was in, which I'm pretty sure was a safe house, or maybe there was a more tragic tale.
I do not believe she escaped Gilead, as much as I hope she did, because to me the evidence all points to her not fleeing the country. First lets go back to the observation of Offred not coming out with her story. They do make a good point that she didn't tell anyone to save her loved ones but the thing that had me stumped was that she was already protecting her loved ones in her tapes. She changed most, if not all, of the names in the tapes, except maybe for Luke but that can go either way, in fact she never even gave her daughter a name in the story because she loved her and wanted to protect her the most. So what does this tell us? Well if she took the time to change all of the names then I believe she was actually planning on coming out with the story and changed the names beforehand (she could have also done it just in case she were captured but there's more to it). Because they were just left in that house it must have meant that she either forgot them, which I highly doubt, or she was re-captured by Gilead.
The house she was staying in was probably a safe house that she was told to wait at until a certain day or until someone came to take her to the next house. But where do the tapes come from? My theory suggests that she came to the house and was told to wait for someone. But there was a problem with the system meaning the person who was supposed to get her was delayed, caught, or dead (basically the same thing) so that left Offred to wait. Deciding after a time that there must have a delay she decided to start her story early so she could get it out right away. Looking through the house she finds a cassette player and decides to use that to record her story and hides the tapes in the military grade locker for safe keeping.
Why the abrupt ending? Well that's simple. She was captured before she could finish her story about her journey safe house to safe house. The person responsible for taking her to the next safe house was capture and tortured into telling them where she was. They came and took her away never knowing about the tapes she had recorded. And thats how it happened, she was never heard from again and the tapes stayed there for about two-hundred years waiting to be found in that locker.
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