The Handmaid's Tale and Warning

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a fascinating potential outcome for American society. Atwood links her talent of writing science fiction with the world we know today in such a way that it seems possible. Not that we want The Handmaid's Tale to become reality.

The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of Offred, her new name literally referring to the man she belongs to. Offred is what known as a breeder or a Handmaid. A woman whose sole use to reproduce in replace of the wife of the household. The Handmaid's Tale tells of the protagonist's mental struggle to accept this new form of hierarchy and is constantly on the lookout for her husband and daughter from before it all changed. Now she spends her day hiding behind the red of her dress; alien to tourists who stop to photograph them and loathsome to the wives but essential in their newfound culture.

The novel is considered a classic but might be found difficult to read due to its lack of quotation marks. However, it is often used in high schools alongside Orwell's 1984 and various other dystopian novels.

I personally enjoyed the novel. However, not a novel to just skim through. It is a novel that makes you think and requires you to pay attention. And for all the aspects that make it a classic, the aspects that attracted me to it in the first place, I really didn't like the ending. This is not a reflection on Atwood's ability to write but rather my affection of the happy ending, or at least an ending that secures lose ties. The Handmaid's Tale leaves you wanting to know more and Atwood leaves you hanging on the anxiety of this society and the creepy possibility of it happening to us.

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