The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
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Book Reviews of The Handmaid's Tale
Book Review: a warning for the future
Summary: 5 Stars
This amazing novel serves as a warning for the future and one that must be observed if we hope to avoid these awful events. In the future, rights for men and women must be observed and be kept equal, as is finally revealed at the end of the novel.
This novel starts out already in Gilead, suggesting that there is no way to avoid these events, but with Offred's flashbacks to the past (and our future) one can see the events that lead up to the formation of Gilead. When given this information, preparation for the future can be started by already coming up with solutions. This book makes you think, and is thus an effective warning. The beginning of the novel serves as the strongest warning as no date is given so you don't know when to expect these events. This makes you alert for the rest of the book, able to absorb the warning. Gilead is described in the beginning and the descriptions only get worse. Gilead becomes a reality to the readers as they become attached to the stories of Offred, Moira and Ofglen, some major women in the story. They live through their struggles and wonder is this will ever actually happen. With Offred's flashbacks of losing her job and finances, we are shown warnings of the future. If that were to happen in the future, we could guess at what would follow next and have an idea of what to do to prevent it.
Another thing that can be gained from reading this novel is an appreciation for the mostly equal treatment of the different genders in our lives today. The consequences of abolishing that is dramatized in the novel and taken to new heights. When you read of Offred's struggles as she loses her job and right to own property, you become more appreciative of what you have today. This novel helps us appreciate what we have so that if it is ever taken away, we will fight for it back and not give in, like some in the novel. The errors of Gilead are not acknowledged until the end of the novel in the "Historical Notes" when Gilead is over and done with. Waiting this long for that realization will not work. Their mistakes needed to have been discovered right at the start so as not to continue it any farther. That is something to keep in mind for the future, our future so that if the time comes, these disastrous mistakes can be avoided.
Book Review: "I Sit, Hands Folded..."
Summary: 5 Stars
THE HANDMAID'S TALE is Margaret Atwood's cautionary future myth of the United States (aka the Republic of Gilead) having fallen under the total domination of the Religious Right. Atwood's novel is one of the most readable and effective entries in the antiutopian genre that includes classics like 1984, ANTHEM, WE, BRAVE NEW WORLD, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and THE IRON HEEL.
Atwood's Gilead is a society where most persons are sterile due to environmental toxins, and where women like "Offred" the narrator are used as Biblical handmaids, to bear children for the ruling elite.
There is a sterile white heat which envelops THE HANDMAID'S TALE throughout, an almost sibilant silence to the book. Society is patriarchical and rigidly hierarchical: Commanders wear black, Wives wear blue, "Marthas" (servant women) wear dowdy green, "Econowives" (non-elite spouses) wear cheap striped dresses, and Handmaids wear billowing red with white blinders, symbolic of the menses.
Handmaids are allowed out only to shop (the stores have pictures of foods, never worded labels), and little or no communication goes on between members of the household. This gives Offred extended periods to ruminate on her past life as a wife and mother in 20th century America, and to compare and contrast this new society with the old. Atwood has caught flack from certain quarters for idealizing our capitalist culture, but it certainly is freer than the world of Offred.
Even in this stultified society, undercurrents exist. The Commander begins to surreptitiously invite Offred into his study to play Scrabble, and sneaks her out to one of the few remaining "gentlemen's clubs"; he complains of his loveless marriage. The Wife promises to help find Offred's vanished daughter in exchange for favors. The Chauffeur, Nick, begins a love affair with Offred; and as the book progresses, Offred becomes aware of a shadowy Underground, "Mayday," designed to help women escape from Gilead. In the end, she leaves the Commander's house, but whether to live or die we never discover.
Strongly pro-feminist, democratic and egalitarian, THE HANDMAID'S TALE is a terrifying glimpse into a future of darkness, the penumbra of which is already touching most Americans' lives.
Book Review: This is a very relevant book in these harsh
Summary: 5 Stars
times when women everywhere are losing their rights and freedoms left and right. Reproductive freedom is under attack in America. White nationalists are worried about "race suicide" because so few white women are bearing more than two children. Feminism is under attack by right-wingers and religious organizations.
This book is about Offred's life and escape from anti-life, anti-woman, totalitarian religious republic of Gilead, where fertile women are forced to breed and to relinquished their children for elite women reminiscence of the age of slavery in which black slave women have no control over her reproduction and that her children and husband can be taken away from her at anytime. Marthas are to be work drones for the elite, much like black housekeepers during slavery and segregation. Jezebels were to be hidden from society in state-licenced brothels/bars to please the commanders and foreign dignitaries(mainly Japanese and Middle Eastern) on demand. Nonwomen are to be worked to death so that they won't be of any challenge to the male-dominant elite. Dissenters are to be put to death as soon as possible as are those of other religions. Blacks are to be relocated to "homelands," which are nothing more than death camps. Those from "unofficial" religions either convert or die. No middle ground exists. Everything is either/or, us/them, women/unwomen, etc.
Offred has done everything in her power to survive in such an inhumane society. She knew that if she doesn't get pregnant within a limited time period that she would be condemned to the colonies where most women worked themselves to death or being slowly poisoned by the nuclear waste there. Working at Jezebels is no real choice either because once a woman fail to please the powerful men who frequent there, she'll be dead as well. Being impregnated by doctors is risky proposition. She could be execution for doing so. Reeking of double standars, huh?
This book and the movie adaption is very chilling to the very soul and should be recommended to those with thick skin and the serious-minded.
Book Review: A Dire Warning
Summary: 5 Stars
The Handmaid's Tale really exceeded my initial expectations. This futuristic novel, set in the future, is a personal account of Offred's life in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and oppressive society in which women are only valued for their abilities to reproduce. The increase in abortions, birth control, and sexually transmitted diseases has caused a decrease in birth rates. Thus, Offred and other Handmaids are forced to have intercourse with their Commanders monthly in order to maintain a steady population. In Gilead, the Handmaids are allowed only the bare minimum of rights--the dictators have even removed everything readable from their lives so that the Handmaids cannot stimulate their thoughts. In her story, Offred reveals tidbits of her past life, where she enjoyed spending time with her family and having the freedom of choice.
Margaret Atwood writes with such power and fluidness that you cannot stop reading her intriguing story. This novel is both humorous and despairing, with an ending that was to me extremely shocking. Upon finishing the book, you will be confronted with a series of new thoughts on our world's problems and our future. Atwood calls to attention numerous issues in society: environmental deterioration, pornography, and degradation of women, to name only a few. Also, Atwood vividly captures human emotion and longing, as Offred is offered no consolation to her alienation and loneliness. The reader can feel Offred's despondency. Atwood exposes mankind's need for human contact and relationships.
The book ultimately serves as an implicit warning to its readers of the dangers of falling into a state of complacency in a world of corruption. The novel is a quite frightening portrait of what may happen to us in the future if we do not change our ways right now.
While in Offred's past, society had the freedom of caring or not caring for the world, her present society has no choice to do anything anymore, even if it wanted to. Atwood is trying to warn us, and she succeeds: as of now, we have a right to apathy--but will we in 20 or so years?
Book Review: Disturbing yet brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
Offred remembers life before the Gileadeans took power. After all, she was a grown woman - a college graduate, married to a man she loved, and the mother of a small daughter - when that happened. Sometimes the memories seem faded, though; and sometimes she can't afford to let herself dwell on them. This reality is so very different, and so very dangerous for those who don't submit to its demands.
Her husband was divorced, so in the eyes of Gilead's God (who doesn't recognize second marriages) she's a loose woman in need of rescue. Since she still has viable ovaries, that rescue takes the form of retraining for life as a handmaid. A baby machine, assigned to one of Gilead's powerful "Commanders" whose Wife cannot bear children. Even Wives are no longer allowed to hold jobs, control money, or read and write. Women in this society exist only to service men, in one manner or another. Handmaids are nothing more than walking wombs. With even her name taken away ("Offred" being literally "Of Fred" - an appellation she'll leave behind when her posting to this particular Commander's household ends), the narrator of this bleak and frightening novel struggles to keep herself alive on all the levels that matter.
Although I'm told the author denies she intended to write a work of speculative fiction, I can see why THE HANDMAID'S TALE is sometimes called a companion piece to Robert A. Heinlein's REVOLT IN 2100. However, Atwood's dystopia combines elements of several different Fundamentalist movements (including clear Muslim echoes); while Heinlein's future U.S. traces direct roots to Christian Fundamentalism. There are many more differences than the obvious one of viewpoint, between Atwood's 30-something female protagonist and Heinlein's innocent young hero.
I often wanted to put this book down, but couldn't. Disturbing yet brilliant, it calmly charts the many ways in which women can be set against each other once their personhood had been taken away. That, more than anything else, makes this one of the scariest works of fiction I've read.