It's
been on my to-read list for a while, and I'm glad I picked it up
finally. It wasn't what I expected. I was expecting a sort of Woman
Versus The Dystopian State tale, something along the lines of 1984 or
Brave New World but with more women. And instead, it was a much more
internal look at the how one responds to changing systems and to
oppression - the lies we tell ourselves to survive and the lies we tell
ourselves to forgive ourselves for perpetuating oppression.
The
prose was beautiful; vivid. I think if there were more women in the
metal scene, there would probably be a Handmaid's Tale concept album. A
lot of very metal motifs: like contrasting flowers/life with rot,
Offred's thoughtful reflections about her surroundings giving way to
unbridled hatred about her situation, the ghost of the former Handmaid
in Offred's room, mistrust, surveillance.....
The dynamic between
the Commander and the Handmaid was well woven and reminiscent of much
of the #MeToo kind of stories (despite Atwood's somewhat poor take on the movement). The commander trying to lead Offred into saying
everything is better now than it was before; the way he exerted power
over her to make her attend him and visit the brothel with him; the way
he deludes himself into thinking she was there because she
wanted to be....
I wasn't such a fan of the epilogue. The
details of the world were not particularly interesting to me, and the
issues Atwood takes aim at (AIDS, nuclear power plants) did not age all
that well. The epilogue critiques how little
we are able to empathize with the pain/humanity of people from centuries
ago - but the tonal shift wasn't quite what I wanted to read at that
point.
I read this during the Summer of 2020, Shelter In Place orders intact, the week
after George Floyd's was murdered by the police, with curfews lasting
days in cities across the country. I saw somewhere a criticism that
the world reflected in The Handmaid's Tale is too unrealistic; society doesn't
change so quickly. That criticism rings so hollow right now - it is very
easy to see how society could change so significantly over the course
of a few years. I hope it does - but in a very different direction.
Saturday, August 7, 2021
Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
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