1. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    The Handmaid's Tale - Atwood

    Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Wreybies, Feb 17, 2017.

    I know that obsessing over this particular books is rather "sophomore year undergrad" of me. Don't care. I did read this book in AP English in my senior year of high school, but I engaged it the way I engaged everything I was made to read at that time: con las muelas de atrás, as we say where I live. Unwillingly.

    Duality is what I take away from this story. And cognitive dissonance. In the case of Offred, the MC, it's acknowledged and addressed, rather than the way we tend to use that term currently, as an indictment of self delusion. She presents her duality to us to explain who she is vs. who she is being.

    The tragedy in this story is the dreariness, the complete lack of color, save for those colors indicating clear-cut, state-approved ideas, thoughts, interpretations. Her life has three crayons. Red, Blue, Black. They are the only allowed things, colors, thoughts. It reminds me much of A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham, wherein the tragedy is not any one terrible event, but the lack of any events of meaning, or of connection. In both stories, the characters are always living in some fantasied other realm of things being different, of finding the thing being sought, and in so doing, becoming aware of what that thing is, because up to now we're searching without knowing. They exist in a kind of suspended animation, without the benefit of time standing still.

    Having just finished it, I'll be mulling this story over for a while.

    Thoughts?
     
  2. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    I haven't read it yet, but the new show should motivate me enough to read it. Atwood is a very good writer, and I believe this is one of her more famous works. I've only read a few of her stories so far. I know she's also known as a good short story writer because I've seen her stories in many magazines and anthologies.
     
  3. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I like Atwood, but I tried to read The Handmaid's Tale many years ago (also as an assignment) and labored to get through it. The implausibility of how she set up the theocratic government impacted my suspension of disbelief from the outset, and that probably colored my view of the rest of the book. Atwood is a fine writer, however, and I should return to this one at some point I suppose.
     
  4. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Do you remember what you found hard to believe about the government? It's been quite a while since I read this, so I can't remember any issues I might have had...
     
  5. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    As I recall, the President (and maybe VP were assassinated), and a bunch of gunmen went in and killed a lot of the Congress, and then suddenly this theocratic government just had control. Not much exploration of how they got control of the military leadership as well as rank and file, dealt with the substantially-armed populace, dealt with the National Guard and supplementary militia forces of the various states, dealt with state and local governments generally, dealt with federal agencies and distributions of power, dealt with the judiciary, etc. If one could take over the country by killing the President and VP and most of the Congress, that would be pretty frightening, but it's not remotely possible to take control just by doing that.
     
  6. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    I found the whole book lack of consequences and almost lack of history frustrating. We're given glimpses of Offred's old life that I would love to know more about, but we're not shown more. We're given a taste of the beginnings of things: the affair with Nick, the friendship with that first handmaid whose name I have forgotten, the reunion with Moira, the discovery and photo of her daughter, the games of scrabble and friendship with the Commander, and finally, the black van. The whole book is a tease and nothing frigging happens. I found it boring about halfway through and that boredom never really lifted - I do believe the blandness of events and blandness of language are both deliberate. However, you could say perhaps it was too effective. That's always the risk when your world is one of monotony and your portray that monotony so well that the reader begins to share the narrating character's boredom and listlessness. Effective, but made me wanna stop reading for the same reason.

    Gilead is a very bleak image. The story about her daughter resonated with me even before I had my own child. I was always waiting for them to reunite. There's something eerily haunting about the whole thing.

    Although you missed out one other "crayon" she has. Green. The Marthas.

    I've heard theories that Offred's real name is June. I never worked out why though - how did people come to this conclusion? Does anyone know?

    Handmaid's Tale was my A-Level text that I never read and then went on to getting full marks in the exam, still never having read the text :D but I did read it as an adult about a year or so ago. I'm glad I finally read it. I also realised why I never enjoyed it!
     
  7. Pinkymcfiddle

    Pinkymcfiddle Banned

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    This is a novel my sister passed down to me. Sorry for any misogyny people might infer from the following statement, but the only female author I enjoyed beforehand was Harper Lee, the rest seemed trivial and inane (here's looking at you Austen!). Atwood changed my mind- I think I was 14 at the time. Unfortunately I remember little of it, other than enjoying it a great deal. As the OP said, I remember a general sense of malaise and dreariness. My memories are more towards the atmosphere than the plot, which I do not mind at all.
     
  8. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Oh I loved To Kill a Mockingbird. Studied it when I was 15 at school and even back then I enjoyed it. Reread it as an adult a year or two ago and loved it even more. I haven't dared touch the sequel though.
     
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  9. Pinkymcfiddle

    Pinkymcfiddle Banned

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    haha me too. I read mixed reviews of the sequel, so avoided it.
     
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  10. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I can defo understand what you're saying here. I think - for me - what kept my attention and... concern?... was the remonstration in play in this story.

    As you mention:
    I usually get rankled at and then disregard the stereotypical judgie eye of our neighbor to the north - Atwood is Canadian - but here, I cannot help but accept the remonstration. I live here. I know what it's like here. I understand the way we Americans turn everything (freedom, religion, food, sex, etc.) into a commodity that easily falls out of its own context and becomes the object of fetishizing. While I agree in full with @Steerpike's mention of how improbable it would be that Gilead comes into being so quickly, as if in one fell swoop, without any retaliation or push-back mentioned by Offred, I can also see how something like this could be more probable in stages, and over time. Given when it was written and that Offred is clearly dead-center Gen-X, her early training toward rampant consumerism* and away from civic knowledge would have meant she could easily turn a blind eye to these things. She would "unsee" (to borrow a Miéville-ism) these things going on around her that didn't fit into the training most of us American Gen-X kids received.

    * It's directly tied to the way American Boomers were brainwashed concerning the idea of anything remotely smelling of socialism. It answers to religious dynamics, though clearly, it's not actually a facet of the religious epistemology. Where Boomers were taught - through tactics of fear and intimidation - to fear the "devil" (socialism, which American Boomers engage as communism or fascism), Gen-X was taught to worship "god" (rampant consumerism). We were the generation sat in front of a weekly 4-hour block of Saturday morning toy commercials (we called them cartoons) and fed Sugar Frosted Sugar-Sugar (this is called conditioning, associating these toy commercials with the massive spike of pleasure inducing sugar).

    Yep, you're right. I missed this. I guess the purposefully invisible nature of the Marthas worked on me too as the reader. ;)

    It's mentioned early in the book in a short list of names she gives. The other names eventually get applied to characters we meet or to whom allusion is made, but no one is ascribed that one name, June. The theory is that she drops that name - her name - randomly there as a way to just say it out loud, this forbidden name, without ever letting us know that it's her. It could equally be her daughter who is also never named.

    I have to agree with you that to say I enjoyed this book would be the wrong word. There's nothing enjoyable about Offred's life. It's horrible. In a similar way, I didn't really enjoy A Home at the End of the World, because of the same bleakness, the same sad hopelessness of people who aren't bad people, but just failing at life. In that story, I wanted to reach in and pull Bobby out and take him home with me, to love him, because he was so in need of it and didn't have a clue how to find it, and everyone else around him, through no real fault of their own, were so equally lost but also infinitely better at taking advantage of others than Bobby could ever hope to be.

    So enjoy is the wrong word. Let's just say that I recognized a masterfully written story, even if that story was a very bitter pill to swallow on several levels.
     
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  11. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I first read this in Finnish as its translation caught my eye (literally "Your Slavess"). Back then I didn't think about religion much as I was something like 13 or 14, but somehow this book played a part in my realizing the restraints and limitations religion can place upon men and women -- women in particular. I never fit that mold, and where Offred's life was limited by force, I started to think about self-imposed, thought-control limitations we place upon ourselves. I wanted to experience life in ways religious doctrines frowned upon and warned against, which left me feeling like Offred -- wanting to just experience life as she had known it before things went upside down. I guess that sounds kind of angsty.

    I didn't think about how things came to be in North America/Gilead, but I guess I took it in as some sort of Western version of the oppression women now experience in Saudi-Arabia, or under Taliban or ISIS. While it's an augmentation, the very extreme of a society where men who use religion as a tool of control are given power, it still resonates with me when I look at the decisions the likes of Pence and Trump make or are willing to make (as an example, I'm horrified of their pro-life anti-abortion stance).

    So concepts like religion, chastity, and piety as tools of oppression stayed with me after reading the book. I did enjoy the writing style (unlike @Mckk, I didn't find it bland at all, I was actually quite entertained and even laughed on an occasion), and I also connected with her relationship with Nick, I thought it was heart-breaking.
     
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  12. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    As a side-note: I jumped right into Atwood's Oryx & Crake the same evening I finished The Handmaid's Tale. Thematically, this book covers some similar territory to THT, but it is devoid of religion thus far. In O&C we meet "Snowman", whose original name "in the time before" was Jimmie. Some sort of terrible pox-eclipse has happened that hasn't been completely spelled out yet. When we meet him, as an older person, he's living in the debris of the past times, literally. We flash back for most of the story to his life before whatever happened and find him living on a sort of corporate enclave, of which there appear to be several. These corporate-run towns seem to be the last vestige of what we would think of as comfortable modern life. Everything else is called the "pleeblands" and one is given to assume that things aren't great there. Thus far in the story Jimmie has lived in two such enclaves, both of which are involved in gene modification, and growing organs, skins, etc., for later use by people.
     
  13. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    @Wreybies - speaking of wanting to take a poor character out of a book and just love him, because you feel that bad for him, that reminds me of the boy in The Road. I only watched the movie, but that was probably the first time I thought the kid should just die because what's the point? It wasn't that I didn't like the kid, but that I didn't feel there was even a shred of hope left in that world of theirs. Incidentally, I hated the ending to that one.

    As for Handmaid's Tale - I hadn't actually thought of it as a comment upon American culture. You'd have to expand on that one though, the fetishising of things.

    @KaTrian - I was still your typical Bible basher back when I was 17 and studying the book, so I didn't honestly take well to the "twist" on Christianity. Even now as an adult, I tend to gloss over the religious aspects because in my head I'm immediately saying, "It's not like that."
     
  14. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    When I see the thoroughly modern images of Iran in the 60s and 70s and compare them to the way people are living today in that country (and others), it definitely makes me think the Handmaid's Tale devolution is totally possible. I don't remember the description of the details of the revolution, but the general idea? Far too realistic, for me.
     
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  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Agreed in full.
     
  16. Kingtype

    Kingtype Banned Contributor

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    Never read it. I'll get to it though someday, but I'm at the moment more interested in her novels The Blind Assassin and Cat's Eye. I did see the Handmaiden's Tale on TV once when I was to young and remembered being confused. So, certainly gotta read it someday.

    The really weird sex scenes were burned into my nine-year-old brain.
     
  17. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I think that reaction makes sense when one is comfortable within that environment and actually finds it safe, empowering, and loving, and has no desire to rebel against it. In other words, fits in.

    For a reader who feels fenced in in the lite version of their religion, be it Christianity, Judaism or Islam, the worst case scenario THT offers can be quite powerful and strengthen their resolve to break free and resist the indoctrination.

    I used to be a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Way too patriarchal and old-fashioned for my tastes, and the grip it has on, say, how Russia is run, is frightening. THT made me think about the relationship between politics and religion as well as womanhood and religion.
     
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  18. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think the links between women, politics and religion are especially relevant in the US these days - the threats to abortion rights, especially, seem relevant to the Handmaid's Tale's vision. In a nation where a significant number of male lawmakers already feel they have the right to deny a woman control over some aspects of her reproductive system, it's not that big a step to controlling all aspects of it. From "you must have this baby" to "you must have my baby"...
     
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  19. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    And to take this out a step further... I was thinking about this last night, about how easy it is to engage Offred and think that I would have done differently, I would have fought, I would have done this, that, the other... I think the reality is that the dynamic of the frog in a cold pot of water is what would really happen. A feeling that this can't be forever, that there has to be an end and that I just have to survive until I get out to that other side. I think that's the more real assessment, which is clearly what Offred is doing. That's also the reason I think that things like this can and do and have happened, as history shows us. It can't be forever; don't get killed trying to fight something shortlived; the people in charge will take care of this, etc.
     
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  20. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    When you see that old clip of Bush and Reagan discussing illegal immigrants at their debate (respectfully, compassionately, etc.) and then look at how illegal immigrants (or immigrants at all) are being treated by the current regime, I think it's a great example of the frog. How did the US move from where it was to where it is? Slowly, but surely.
     
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  21. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Women can also be pro-life, either for religious or moral reasons, so law-making here is not an exclusively men-controlling-women issue. But since THT is about a woman, oppressed on account of her sex, for me this book becomes a discussion of women & religion. Now, Pence and Trump (who happen to be men, as I'm sure Sarah Palin would push similar policies) unnerve me because the vision of THT is realized in a smaller scale in their decision-making and the policies they support in issues that concern women in particular, be they abortion or contraception. To take it a step further, certain religious... ideas weaken the position of already vulnerable groups, so bringing them to politics is questionable and THT is one depiction of such a scenario gone out of hand.

    If Trump is so worried of Mexican rapists hurting American women, maybe he and his cohorts should ask themselves how they're hurting American women by taking away choice (or at least making that choice becomes harder and less safe). When abortion is made legal, affordable, and easy to access, women who don't want to carry the fetus to term are free to make that choice. It doesn't infringe on the right of another woman to keep their baby. So in that light, if secularism and the separation of church and state will be under attack over the upcoming years in the US, this book will become all the more relevant.
     
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  22. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Not to mention the simple fact to which culture constantly wants to turn a blind eye: Making these things illegal doesn't make them go away, it just makes them illegal and horribly unsafe. We know for a fact that terminating pregnancies has been around since women first discovered that eating certain things was very often followed by spontaneous miscarriage.

    Atwood does also address this in THT, I feel, in a lateral way, when the Commander takes Offred into his study to play scrabble, when he takes her to the "hotel" and asks her to play the part of the prostitute along with the other actual prostitutes who are clearly ensconced in this place with a system and an understood way of doing things. These needs, whatever those needs may be, remain. We are the creatures that we are. We create whole epistemologies to try to seperate ourselves from the rest of life on Earth, but this is farce. We're all just one foot off of the East African plain, butt-naked with a stick in our hand. In the aforementioned transgressions by the Commander, which Offred engages with a sense of pity, I think Atwood addresses a similar theme to Butler in her Xenogenesis books, the idea that until we get comfortable with our animal self, accept it, stop trying to pretend it is other than what it is, these things will continue to happen.
     
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  23. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    @BayView - what you said somehow reminds me of something I read on Facebook. It was a link to some of the stupidest things men have said in the delivery room, and the poster gives an example of her own partner, which was that after a C-section and she couldn't quite reach her phone and asked her partner for help, he looked at her and said, "You're gonna have to get used to doing things on your own." And refused to help. (call me judgemental but based on this comment - a comment that lacks any kindness or maturity - I am amazed anyone fell for him.)

    I feel like it's men like this that would make laws controlling a woman's reproductive rights - men who know nothing and lack the compassion or wisdom to see the world any differently than he already does.

    @Wreybies - I remember though that my teacher suggested Atwood was questioning whether the life of "freedom" as portrayed in the night club was really worthwhile, that it was a criticism of that freedom. Looking at it though, I'd question if it was portraying "freedom" at all. It was more like an inadequate puppet posing as freedom - the only "freedom" available to them in the world of Gilead. Again, I wish Atwood had expanded on Moira's fate. It was like Atwood was using Moira to dash any hopes the reader had for Offred, dangling Moira in her broken state in front of the reader after all those heroic and defiant stories Offred told of her.

    The Japanese tourists taking photographs has always struck me - except I am not sure why. Like there could be a normal world outside of this surreal story. Thinking about it now, it's not that different from North Korea.

    @KaTrian - in the case of Christianity portrayed in fiction, I guess I am tired of the negative light shone upon it. They're all pretty unoriginal. They quote the same few passages from the Bible and in popular TV and bestselling novels, the Christian is usually a nutcase out murdering people in God's name. If we're talking about the potential of an ideology being twisted and abused, any ideology is susceptible to that. If it's supposed to be a critique specifically on how Christianity can be abused, and it can, I'd appreciate a fresher take on it and a more realistic one - one that I can see at large being practiced at church now. I guess in The Handmaid's Tale, I didn't so much see Christianity in it as I simply saw some Christian references and that I am supposed to think this Gilead was built upon the teachings of the Bible - but it held no aspect of the religion I actually recognised. To me, it's not so much a critique on Christianity as it was simply, at best, a convenient stand-in for a religion, and at worst a deliberate misunderstanding and inaccurate portrayal of Christianity. (mind you, I read this book a year or two ago now so I don't remember everything too well anymore)
     
  24. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    My take on this - especially the way Atwood takes pains to let us know that the "night club" is carefully planned - is that this is Atwood telling us how much of a sham all of it is. For all the Gileadean piousness, that nightclub was always meant to be, was always in the works. You only had to scratch the surface of this charade to see that most of it was a lie, and that the higher up you were, the more of a lie it was. I agree that it's not an image of freedom. Moira is as much a cog in the machine as Offred. She just has a different roll. Moira, the rebel, has actually "settled in" for the long haul. She's accepted the status quo. For me, this is Atwood also telling us just how easy it is to lose at the game of freedom, how easily a little bit of leverage can put a lot of necks under your boot. It's part of her warning, in my opinion.
     
  25. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    In this sense, Offred was perhaps the stronger character, the truer rebel. She never really submitted - she simply rebelled in a different way, like a sleeper agent lying dormant. Moira for all her fire couldn't last long enough to get her out of the system - but that is also pretty realistic of the different types of people in the world. I know I'm more of a Moira than I am an Offred, and I know how fast my strength and fire fizzles out - because you simply can't burn on max in the long run. You can't run a marathon like you sprint.

    For all my discontent about the book, I must say Atwood crafted some excellent characters. I am still discontent about the book precisely because the characters and their stories felt so real that I long to hear how they ended - and we never find out :( that's just mean.

    I do wonder though, the discontent of the Commander - I wonder if Atwood was making a comment about manhood too, even though that particular message/theme was only touched upon through scrabble.

    Why create a world like Gilead though just to plan in a night club like that? Like, of course we never see how such a world came to be - but what could have prompted Gilead's governors?
     
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