The Handmaid's Tale

I had purchased this book quite some time ago when a friend of mine mention it to me... I had thoughts of Fifty Shades of Grey which I had purchased because another individual had liked it... Let me say right away that I read less than 50 pages of the latter and stopped reading. On the other hand, when in a discussion with a good friend, I was talking about the latest attempt to control women, looking to stop the use of an abortion pill that was been on the market for decades... At that point, she cried "OMG, The Handmaiden is Happening! After that conversation was over and I was home, I pulled up my copy of The Handmaid's Tale. It seemed like I was led to be reading it now... I knew immediately what my friend meant. At the end, I began to read the Historical Notes, but at first overlooked the date 2195... I went in search of what is referred to as the Gileadean Regime. Which was to have been the time during which a religious group had taken over America... Suddenly I had to agree. The Handmaid's Tale was now moving forward as had begun during the beginning of the decade... See my blog post for relevant videos I found... Women have been talking about this book since 2016, in particular! The main character is a young woman, much like my friend, who has a loving husband and a child. Soon, both of them have disappeared and she never sees them again. As we watch the woman, now given another name, she imagines what might have happened to her family. And she strives to remember the past, what was happening in her life and in the world... She is not allowed to have any contact with that world; she remembers though and hopes she will not lose those memories--of Luke, her husband and her child, a little girl... Once during the book, a picture of her daughter was shared by the wife of the man who now owned her... She wants a child enough that she is willing to bargain with his Handmaid... There are three handmaids for his man. We never know exactly who or what he does. It is irrelevant since they are closeted away and are only seen when sex is to occur. Both of the prospective parents are included in this charade... It is described in the book; it is terrible to visualize... And then after been raped by her owner a number of times, she arranges through his driver to have her visit him in his office. Interestingly, he asks her to play a board game... As time goes by, he introduces a magazine no longer in print, having been banned, and allows her to sit in the room to read it; he sits watching her... and they talk. He shares that he and his wife no longer talk to each other like they once did. He misses that. She now talks mostly with the wives of other owners, as they are permitted to interact only with them... It seems that every woman who is living at the time, has been given a job in their new locations... Marthas, for instance are the cooks, obviously named after the two sisters in the Bible, Martha being the one who quickly prepares a meal when Jesus visits... But there is little to do about religion in this world in which has been created... except what is important to ensure that women know their places... the reason seems to be close to what is being spouted now... white women are not now producing enough children... something had to be done... work was no longer possible. The women needed to be free to be available for those times when it was possible to get pregnant. Nothing else mattered. The entire book is centered into one household full of women--and one older man. Other men may work for the man as well; but the women all had specific tasks. And those who "believed" in what was happening were called Aunts; they were to train, supervise, and, if necessary, punish the handmaids. A cow prod was used. Soon the woman who has a new name is comfortable enough with the head of the house to have him ask her if she would like to have an adventure... She is taken to what we would call a brothel, she is dressed for the occasion from old, use, sex-oriented clothing that has been hidden away after all such activities were forbidden in the world... Only men of the Gilead Regime were members of the Club... And, yes, it was a sex club where the leaders of the group participated in their sexual interests--beyond what were performed with the Handmaids... Sound familiar? As you may already have realized, many of the things that were now forbidden for women in the book have already started occurring, based upon the move by a presidential candidate and his followers. There have been many women caught by the state congresses to stop abortions for religious reasons, it seems. I am one of the many Christians who do not accept that the Christian Nationalist Party has anything to do with God our Father... And, for me, Jesus His Son... If you have had any questions regarding this matter, I highly recommend you start reading...before it, too, is banned... The Handmaid's Tale spotlights exactly what will be happening to any woman if the party candidate (or his down-ballot candidates) are elected into office in 2024. In my opinion, there is no better way to see how religion as a single authority results in America going backward in progressive changes made during the last 100 years. Voting will be eliminated... All books of any kind will be removed... Women will be divided into groups, some of whom will be training young women to have unwelcomed sex with their new owner(s). Wives will be...tolerated...or ignored altogether... We have already seen that rape and incest are not to be factors in deciding about having an abortion. Indeed, no medical issues can affect the birth moving to completion, even if the new baby dies in the mother's arms soon thereafter. She will then be expected to begin again to provide a way to provide heirs for old men whose wives are past the age... This book prophesized it; we have not choice as women--we must speak out against it! I consider this a must-read for every woman, and man who will be left without a wife or forced to give up all children from their marriage... Margaret Atwood watched what was happening. She wrote a futuristic novel to illustrate what she foresaw... I, too, believe, "The Handmaid Tale is NOW Happening..." GABixlerReviews

I knew nothing about this book when I bought and read it. I wish there were some way to review it without telling anything about it. The story definitely works better if you allow Atwood to bring you slowly up to speed. Stepping into the story with a knowledge of its setting and basic plot is bound to cause frustration, because Atwood parcels her secrets with great patience. So, if you want to enjoy this book as much as possible, and if you truly know nothing about it, then stop reading this review (and any others) and start reading THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Still reading? Fair enough. Atwood's story takes place in an alternate future where America (at least large portions of it) has been taken over by radical religious groups. The narrator of the tale lives in Gilead (in what we would call Maine), and she performs the functions of a concubine for a top-ranking political leader of this new, brutal regime. Everything in Gilead is (ostensibly) based on a religious (Christian) precedence, and so women's rights have been vastly curtailed. They are not even allowed to read. Told in the first person, the novel's prose is beautifully done, although it does begin to drone near the middle of the novel. Other reviewers have complained about the odd punctuation, fragmented sentences, and stilted structure, but if you make it to the end of the book, the narrator's strange approach to storytelling is fully explained. I found it rather poetic and insightful. Others (people who seem wedded to traditional novel structure) complain that it is insufferable. If you absolutely must have quotation marks, or if you can't stand run-on sentences, then step aside and read some Dan Brown or something. The book doesn't appear to have much in the way of a plot until you hit the middle point. The handmaid (her name is Offred, which is a title that indicates she is owned by her patron, a powerful man named "Fred;" the name is also a clever symbolic twist on the fact that all handmaids are required to wear bright red dresses) mostly just observes the world she is in for the first half of the novel, and her passivity gets a bit redundant by the halfway point. Atwood, seeming to know this, then sends the novel into more exploratory areas, and Offred is given a chance to witness other, less religiously pure, aspects of Gilead's society. Interesting still, although, again, little can be said to happen. I enjoyed this novel because, more than anything else, it is a excellently drawn portrayal of where religious fundamentalism and political fascism are rather easily intertwined. As a pastiche of moments/images that paint a picture of a world built on hypocrisy and the less-holy tenets of the Bible, the book works quite well. It is more a "imagine this world" kind of story, and if you are a reader who enjoys being submersed in new ideas and environments, the novel offers a lot of philosophical/political/sociological ideas to muse over. If you want action, cause and effect, intrigue, and conflicts leading to complications leading to resolutions, well, this is not the book for you. Because the book is so relentlessly symbolic as well as political, it is bound to bore some and insult others. The story is most obviously about women's rights and religious fanaticism, but it is also about humanity's self-destructive tendencies, the nature of fear and oppression, and the different shapes that insanity can take. It is a textbook more than a storybook, and this is hammered home in the final section of the novel. I won't tell you what happens, other than to say that the book, at a key moment in the story, takes a radical shift in its story-telling. For 95% of the novel, you are intimately involved, inside the head of poor Offred, witnessing and hearing and experiencing her world first hand (and usually in the present tense). For the last 5% of the book, you are so far removed from the contents of the handmaid's tale that it is a rude and (for me) somewhat unpleasant shock. The final moments of the book felt like Atwood trying to both ameliorate the reader's desire for clarification but also remain tantalizingly withdrawn; she spoon-feeds the readers some key data, while purposefully leaving vague the information that readers really want to know (let's just say that the Handmaid's Tale, like the Canterbury Tales from which the title was drawn, isn't exactly finished). I suppose this is just a final confirmation that this book is less about the handmaid herself, and more about the world she inhabited. It would have been nice for Atwood to craft a better end point for the story, or to at least offer a meager reward for the readers who were following Offred's story with patience and focus. But books like these are meant to be cautionary and theoretical rather than literary treats. This is not a fun story, nor is it exciting or clever. It is scary, dark, and unforgiving. For readers who enjoy theory, ideas, and the thought that there might be a meaning to life, this novel is a kind of beautiful punishment. You might not deserve punishment (Offred certainly didn't), but I think that's kinda the point.

The Handmaid's Tale is a relatively "old" book in that it was first published in 1985, but it is still popular/well-known. This is not surprising as Margaret Atwood is one of those author’s whose work will endure as "literature" and she will still be well known in 100 years. That is, unless the Handmaid's Tale is prophetic and all secular literature is burned. Don't worry, it won't be. However, it does have some elements that could be argued as being a caricature of modern day happenings. There are plenty of reviews out there that give a run down of the plot and how they feel it's all happening right now. No doubt many of these reviews are from women, and justifiably so since this book "speaks to them". So I'm going to discuss the subtext of the novel, and hopefully, I can get a few guys to read this book because there is stuff in it for them. The background story is that The United States has been taken over by religious fundamentalists. The religion is never mentioned by name, but it is clearly Christian/Jewish/Islamic. When it comes to their respective flavors of fundamentalism, they all bear a striking resemblance to one another whether they want to admit it or not. This is not surprising, since they all worship the same god and use overlapping religious texts. If you're curious about the tale of how this happened, this is not the book for you. After all, this is the Handmaid's Tale. All you get is the story of one woman starting probably about 10 years after an event called "The President's Day Massacre", i.e. the coup where the fundamentalists took over. Personally, I do not think such a regime could take over in such a simple manner, but what followed after the coup is more plausible. As I said, we don't get much of this story directly, but we hear snippets of how, slowly, over the course of weeks and months, oppressive policies are implemented and they are always implemented for the same reasons that such policies are implemented today. Namely, the safety of the public, the betterment of society, etc. At the same time, women are slowly and unequally stripped of their rights. If you think that women could never be usurped of their identities in this way, and no one would stand for it, blah, blah, blah. You are wrong. All it takes is the right social pressure. Imagine a scenario where the number of women capable of bearing children is cut to a small percentage. They then become a "national resource". (My words, not the author's.) When it comes to resources, there will always be people (usually men, and this is coming from a man) in power who will want to exploit and seize control of such resources. This is how such things can happen. And this is the scenario used by Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale. When I was younger, I probably would never have bought that line of reasoning and not terribly enjoyed this story. As I've aged to a venerable 40 years and some of my Platonic idealism has tarnished, I have learned to accept that "the masses" don't get as outraged as individuals do. Most of the time, groups of people are scared when it comes to dramatic change and accept it if fed the line that it is temporary and for the good of all. Most of the time, these changes are never about being for the good of all, they are simply about control. A past example to show even women are not above this: The Temperance movement to abolish alcohol. Propelled by religious minded women, fresh with their new ability to vote. Despite Jesus being pro-wine they felt it their duty to rid the world of drink. You can argue the details all you want, but at the end of the day, it was about asserting power and control. A modern example: For the past 12 years, the U. S. citizens have been force fed the line that we are all living under a faceless threat of "Terror" and in this time we have fought two wars, one of which we are still fighting, and most of us don't really know why, other than we are "fighting terror". These wars are not as openly covered as the Vietnam War, because our government has learned that atrocities that are not visited daily are quickly forgotten because people prefer to stick their head in the sand. And so people forget. They don't get outraged. They simply accept the situation because it is supposedly temporary, for the good of us all, for all our safety, blah, blah, blah. What are we looking to control? Some say oil, others say that the area is strategically located real estate. Regardless, it is about control. So do I think a "fast coup" could take over and make such radical changes? No. But a slow insidious change over the course of a decade or two? Well, I have seen it with my own eyes, so yes, the scenario in The Handmaid's Tale is plausible to me, but I know that such a shift would happen over years, not months. Anyone who thinks otherwise is sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and repeating the above blah, blah, blahs. A possible future example that's been a long time in the making: During the 80's (my youth) religious fundamentalists (in this country) blew up abortion clinics because they were outraged and wanted change. Presumably, they wanted things to return to the way they were when abortions were illegal, in back allies with coat hangers. Just in my lifetime, they have since learned that getting people upset only motivates them to stand with or against you. And if you're the one blowing up teenagers, it's tough to motivate people to stand with you. They have taken their fight political, a realm where everybody's eyes glaze over and become dispassionate, and they have slowly set about making laws against birth control and abortion clinics. As someone who is pro-choice, I can't say all of these laws are bad. Many are simply requiring clinics to uphold standard medical cleanliness practices. The laws that really hurt, are the laws that reduce or eliminate funding preventing the clinics from having the money to be able to upgrade their facilities and are forced to shut down. You can tell this is about the control of others and not about any religious objection because the number one cited religious reason is the belief that life begins at conception. Rather than supporting research for birth control that simply prevents conception, they politically attack all avenues of abortion and birth control. So even if you address their concerns, it does not change the way they behave. Leaving the examples and subtext behind, back to the story at hand. The Handmaid's Tale is true literature, thus by practical definition, this makes the story a little slow and boring at points. When I was in college, I had to take plenty of slow and boring classes that I thought were of minimal value. However, I quickly learned that it is possible to garner lessons from and learn something from every class and that is what I set out to do. I took it upon myself to walk away with something for my time and money. This book requires that same model of thought. Even after 28 years, there is a wealth of intriguing thought experiments that went into the writing of this story and a similar trove for those willing to consider the next step of reasoning, but you have to be willing to dig for that gold. And there you have it. The subtext of The Handmaid's tale is a marvellously thought provoking book about the subtleties that go into how societies change, but if you're not interested in thinking, move on to something formulated for entertainment purposes this is not the novel for you.

There may be possible light spoilers ahead: Read at your own risk! As scary as the whole total subjugation of the female species would be I was honestly just as appalled by the fact that women were not allowed to read. I could think of nothing more boring than that. That out of the way my opinion of the book is mixed. It is written as though in present tense but, as you find out later, it is not. The effect of that is that the memories that she is recalling do not seem immediate or intense at all. Her missing her husband and longing for her child just do not resound with the reader because she barely sounds like she misses them. The narrative skips around a lot, back and forth through time, often from paragraph to paragraph so if that and things like dropped quotation marks bug you then this may not be the book for you. However, it does fit with the way the story is told. One thing that bothered me a lot was her dangling information just out of your reach. Purposely. And to the point it got very irritating. Want to know that happens to Offred? Too bad. How about Luke and their daughter? Nope. Nick? What the women got hung for? Anything that might have raised a spark of curiosity? Nope, nope and nope again. And what is really infuriating is that she wrote an afterword, as though scholars were studying the Gileadean society. She could have used this as an opportunity to answer some of the questions she raises but no, just takes it as an opportunity to rub our noses in the fact that yet again she decides to withhold information. Which would have felt a little cheap but would have been better than nothing. Two things I found very disturbing about the book. The first is the way the women treated each other. Even though the other women had basically been ripped from their lives as well ( The cooks and the housekeepers and so on) they seem to be pretty laid-back as to what has happened to them and to adjust pretty quickly. And everyone looks down on and seems to scorn the Handmaidens. Even though they (the Handmaidens) have been ripped from their lives and families and pretty much forced into a rape contract where if they don't reproduce they will be killed, the other women in the novel show an amazing lack of compassion. For each other, also. It is made clear that the Wives hate the Handmaidens but almost seem to act like they wanted to become breeders. I actually found that the most disturbing of all. Maybe I think to well of the human race but I would hope that in a similar situation the women would at least have an iota of compassion towards each other. The other thing is that the book pretty much sends the message that the men in your life, no matter what, will jump at the chance to disempower you and enjoy your subjection. Even the good ones secretly want it. There are also some plot holes that since she doesn't seem to want to answer questions about it remain gaping. For instance: The reasoning behind the Handmaids is that there aren't enough children and that everyone desperately wants one. Ok, fine. But then you learn about an unofficial Commander's club called Jezebel's which is basically a brothel. It is stated that all of the women that work there have had an operation to prevent getting pregnant because "think of what kind of problems that would cause" in the words of one character. Um, I don't really get that. Everyone is so desperate for children yet they are cutting off a very large avenue of reproduction. That is one of the questions but there are many more like it. It almost feels like the author couldn't think of workable solutions and so just left it vague. All of this may sound like I did not like the book but I did. It's a good book, it just has its problems.

I will admit - Over the years, 'Handmaid' was one of those books everyone had told me just HAD to be read - but with the clear discomfort they'd show in saying that, I always thought - Nope; not for me. I'm just not one for the whole dystopian thing; I need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Fast forward to last week - this book being required for my daughter's Eng Lit class, and sitting available while I was at loose ends in a Starbucks for several hours - I thought, Why not?... and how glad I am, that I had those few hours. Wow. I was gone, hook line and sinker, from the first page on. Handmaid is set in, yes, a dystopian future in which women's place in the world has been subverted, through various events which resonate awfully closely with current times. The story picks up at the moment when Offred (a concatenation of her "owner's" name and her position in this society) is assigned to a new home in a city in America, for reasons that become all too clear within a few short pages. Her experiences within this new environment, interwoven with her recollection of her past before this societal apocalypse, unveil themselves like the layers of an onion - a never-ending interweaving of recollections and current experiences which, in their close parallels with so much that seems to be happening in our current world, make it not just an uncomfortable read, as so many other reviewers have said; but an eerily prescient one for these times. I could go on about that aspect of what makes this such a valuable read for any person over the age of 10 years old, but I'm quite sure many of the 1,000 + prior reviewers will have spoken to that far more effectively than I ever could. But for me, what makes this book so great is the Voice that the protagonist gains as she struggles in such a harsh, unforgiving, and shockingly cruel environment - the brutal honesty with which that voice speaks to the horrors and impossible personal choices that any of us would have to make, faced with such a savagely misogynistic society. There is no turning away from those realities in this book; Offred is, clearly, no better than any of us; but, she is, perhaps, more honest about her choices than any of us would ever manage to be. She has no roads but dead ends; no feelings but pain, isolation, and tragic loss; in a society which both reviles her and yet absolutely, completely, stunningly, needs her. And yet. There is compassion - much compassion - in this book not just for Offred but for each of her persecutors; and a perfectly clear view, of each person in Offred's life, from the patriarchy which dictates every aspect of the lives of the Americans; to the women with whom she is forced to share the household; to the man who runs their lives - and in theory owns Offred, body and soul. Margaret Atwood has managed to capture the complete horror of this situation and yet the complete spectrum of needs and innate humanness - warts and all - of each of the players in this world, speaking with true sight not only about what they each do, but the real WHY of it, like a series of ornate but utterly constrained chess pieces moved about in a deadly game by unseen hands. Atwood's brilliance with the written word, the layers of meaning she assigns to so many individual words, is a both a challenge and a complete delight, no matter how difficult the topics she makes us consider. Each page is like unwrapping a gift of many layers of brightly colored paper, never knowing what you will ultimately find inside: something to treasure, or something to fear. Offred's voice and her observations of self, other, and society are so clear and beautiful, so bleak, sad and yet hopeful - so compelling - in making us see these people. There are many phrases and visions Atwood has generated that will stay with me, now, for life. I cannot say I am in all cases glad of that - but I know i am richer for it. And in reading many of the current, more negative responses of the Amazon reading community, I cannot help but wonder if their dislike of the book is in many cases driven precisely from Atwood's artistry with words. She holds up not a picture for us to view, but a mirror to reflect realities that in many cases no one in their right mind would want to see - they are far too close, too personal, too true. And yet - we MUST look. I do not see, as some others do, a depressing endgame in this book; quite the opposite. Offred's determination to survive no matter what the cost and her slow but relentless growth to her own form of power and eventual rebellion, is not so much a story as a roadmap. We could all do well by, like Offred, looking with clear eyes at this dystopian imagining. If, at the end of the day, this book leaves you uncomfortable or depressed or angry - good, if at the same time it also manages to leave you unsettled. Atwood's intent was never to entertain you but to inform you - and that, she does with a master's deft hand. Three days and counting. What will we learn in Atwood's new book? I look forward, with a perfectly uncomfortable blend of anticipation and anxiety, dread and hope, to the answer to that question.

If you don't already know, this is a dystopian novel (a la Hunger Games ) set somewhere in the near future after there's been a government coup and the new leaders have stripped the rights of women (and any other "minorities"). The handmaids are women who are still able to reproduce after unspecified causes, and their job is to give wealthy husbands and wives children. Offenders to the new government, including gay men and women (just because), are just killed and literally hung out to dry. This tale follows the life of one particular handmaid, Offred. In flashbacks, we are given bits and pieces of her former life before she was a handmaid and before the government coup. Mostly, though, we listen in on her thoughts and watch her interact with people in her daily life. After watching the excellent Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood's book, I had to read the original source material. The series (and concept) is so fascinating (and scary) that I wanted (needed) to see how it compared. Most of all, in the era of "President" Trump, it's a bit too realistic of an idea that's not too hard to imagine actually happening under his Republican regime. This is one case where I thought the movie/show was better than the book. The TV series follows the original book very closely, but goes into so much greater detail, giving us more insight into the characters and society. Of course, Atwood had just 300 pages to fill, whereas the TV series had 10 hour-long episodes. I won't spoil anything, but I will note that the book does end similarly to the season finale of the first season of the TV series. This is my first book of Atwood's, and I can already tell that I want to read more of her many, many novels in the future. She's got some pretty interesting and frightening ideas about alternate futures and realities. Her writing itself is very easy to read, even though there were times in this particular novel where I felt she was rambling and could have given us more information and insight into Offred or society rather than rambling about things we already read before. She also goes back and forth between using quotation marks around spoken words, which is distracting. In some cases, she used them and in others, she didn't. This is a pet peeve of mine; I prefer (and learned in my creative writing and English classes) that all spoken words should be in quotation marks, not just for proper grammar, but because it makes for an easier read, defining exactly what is dialogue and what is descriptive text. "The Handmaid's Tale" is definitely worth a read, but I also highly recommend watching the TV series as well.

The Handmaid's Tale is an incredible read. The story is gripping, the writing is compelling, and the themes are both chilling and thought-provoking. It’s a book that stays with you long after you finish it, making you reflect on society, power, and freedom. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction with depth and strong storytelling.

I first read The Handmaid's Tale around the time it was published in 1986. I was just 22, a sheltered young thing. I recall wondering what everyone was raving about, since only the top story layer of the book connected for me. Now, with decades of life experience behind me, I see that this is a deeply moving, complex book. I'm so glad I decide to read again just at this moment in time. You would think that something written thirty years ago would seem dated. But that wasn't the case for me. If anything, I think there are so many things imagined in the book which have become more possible today instead of less. In a sense, this is a cautionary tale that a large art of the population ignored or misunderstood. More than ever, we should be reading this and sharing it with the young women in our lives. And discussing it with them, so they see more of the depth than my 22-year-old self did. Margaret Atwood imagined a world where a totalitarian power went into action against foreign zealots and their own people's "wanton" behavior. This power was meant to make the world better, but it also created a world of highly distinct "haves" and "have nots." She says, “Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.” It might be just me (although I suspect not) but this sure sounds like what we often hear today on the news and in conversations. Reading this at the end of 2016 after a brutal election cycle, the following quote from Atwood seems both wise and horrible. Have we not been hearing about people who feel invisible? “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories" Atwood's Republic of Gilead gives people one-dimensional functions. Correction - she gives women one-dimensional functions. They are Wives, Marthas, Handmaids, Aunts, or Unwomen (and a few more which would be spoilers). Unwomen are rebels, likely to be banished to the toxic waste dumps of the colonies. Everyone else plays a part in the singular female focus - procreation. As I read, I wondered what category I'd fall into should I have the bad luck to land in Gilead. The women there have no layers of life or experience. They are expected only to fulfill their narrow role. Why is procreation such a focus? Because of falling birth rates among white people. This book doesn't discuss race except one small spot near the end. It's as if there is only one race in Gilead. And the only people in that race with any power are men. The main character, Offred (literally of Fred named after the Commander she serves) is the perfect blend of weak and strong. She tells us of her past and says, “When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” But her life is not beautiful. And Atwood straddles the line of past and present, sending back and forth in a way that keeps you wanting more. Just as Offred wants more. Just as we all want more for ourselves and the generations of women coming after us. If you read this book long ago, pick it up again. If you haven't yet read it, move it up to the top of your TBR. Buy it for friends. Buy for your sons and daughters. Use it to teach and to learn what kind of world we could be if we stop valuing the diversity of all people.