The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood writes a frighteningly convincing novel about a society where women have lost all freedom.  The novel takes place in America-the entire government has been killed-and there are a new set of rules being enforced.  A new society is created where all women fall into certain categories.  The story of this demented new way of life is Offred (a name assigned to her) where she slowly unravels the outrageous world she now lives in.  The society is broken down by households.  Each household contains: a Commander (male), a chauffeur (male), a Wife, a Handmaid, Aunts, and Marthas.  Within this highly religious society there is one and only one mission: for the Handmaid's to get pregnant for the Commander and Wife.  They are brainwashed to believe that their only role is to be serviced by the Commander, they are simply a shell of a person.  A brief description can hardly do justice to the intricate story that Atwood has created, to fully understand you should probably just read the novel.

The reasoning in creating this society was to "protect" women from the current "out of control" society.  Women weren't considered safe, so they created this dystopian society that took all choice and freedom from all women.  In other words keeping them stupid is keeping them safe?  This is an extremely scary idea and while reading this novel I found myself thinking about living that kind of life.  I would not last long in a society where I wasn't allowed to have a voice.  While reading, the discussion of what was left out when creating this society and Offred says love.  There is no chance for a woman to have the freedom to even meet someone outside of her household, let alone be courted by and fall in love with a man of her choosing.  The well known question is given to her as a rebuttal: "Is it better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved at all?"  Offred believes that this person must of not ever truly felt love before because anyone who has ever found the real deal would always chose love.

I have a hard time being too critical of novels.  I think about the author and the amount of time that went into writing their book and it just makes me feel that if I ever write a book, I'd hate for my readers to throw it aside because of a couple little things that annoyed me as a reader.  Atwood did a couple of things that kind of bothered me, but it's her book and she did a damn good job creating a society that essentially could happen.

-Toni