The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library)
by Margaret Atwood
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Book Summary Information
Author: Margaret AtwoodEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-17
ISBN: 0307264602
Number of pages: 392
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Book Reviews of The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library)
Book Review: Well Tread Ground, but a Powerful Read Nonetheless
Summary: 5 Stars
Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
This futuristic novel, published in the mid 1980's, describes life in the Republic of Gilead, a stifling, dictatorial, theocracy formed following a coup in the United States, in which the President and several governmental leaders were killed. In the Republic, basically all freedoms have been eradicated, and all activities are carefully monitored and regimented by a secretive government. Free speech is stifled by fear, including fear of being reported by an informant. Women are particularly abused by the government, losing all right to own personal property or to hold a job (other than menial jobs for the benefit of the state). In an effort to depersonalize, each level of woman is required to wear a different color and type of dress (for example, our protagonist must wear a red dress with "wings" surrounding her face to hide it and to hide her gaze). The government seeks to justify this loss of freedom by contrasting the dangers that existed in the previous society (rape, murder, etc) with the stifling safety which exists in the new society--arguing that they have simply modified "freedom to into freedom from."
Into this world, we are presented with the protagonist, Offred, whose role in society is that of a Handmaid. A Handmaid's job is to bear a baby for a Commander--a high ranking official of the new order. Apparently, this society has largely lost its ability to bear children, due to various factors, such as widespread use of contraception, damage to the environment and nuclear explosions. The scenes describing the depersonalized, ritualized, desexualized procreative activities among the Commander, the Commander's wife, and the Handmaid are at the same time horrible and comic.
Offred reveals her story through her description of her interactions and experiences, and her recollections. Without doubt, the pacing is slow. However, the speed (or lack thereof) makes sense, given Offred's limited understanding of what has happened to the world and what is happening to her, her very constricted ability to acquire new information, and her inability to rely on the true motivations of any characters she meets.
While the Handmaid's Tale covers well tread ground, I nonetheless found the book to be well-written, with some very intriguing concepts and themes, including:
1. Notwithstanding the "new order," you can't really change who people are, what's important to them, and what motivates them. While the government publicly sought to put a beneficent face on the goals of their new society, we the reader understand this to be just another example of an effort to sacrifice the less powerful for the benefit of the more powerful.
2. For everyone Offred meets, she must decide whether they are "a true believer," a dissenter, or perhaps worst, a nonbeliever who will snitch on her for a momentary advantage. Then within these categories, she must assess their relative power, and what each person is trying to achieve or avoid. As such, even the simplest interactions, becomes a complex, tense, chess match or dance (whether real or imagined).
3. A Handmaid is not permitted to own any personal property, even a pencil. Ownership, being a cornerstone of the human psyche, Offred finds herself coveting even the simplest items, a pen, a cigarette, a match.
4. As in many extreme situations, people are forced to make many difficult choices, and to discover what's really important to them.
5. The epilogue to the book is a symposium presentation on the Gileadean era given 150 years following the period in which the book takes place. This was a fascinating device the author used to place the story into a larger context.
All in all, a fascinating, well-written book, that has well stood its 25 years since publication.
Summary of The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood?s The Handmaid's Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.
Like Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World and George Orwell?s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.
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