I had been wanting to read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for months. I knew that I was going to love it, so I didn't want to borrow or check it out and I couldn't find a cheap copy of it to purchase. Then, about a month ago, divine intervention occurred and I received a copy as a gift.
I must say that this novel was well worth the wait and that I was correct in assuming that I would want to own my own copy. I have a strange, eerie fondness for dystopia novels and this is one of the best ones that I have read. I think that what really gave it the edge is that it is told entirely from the female perspective in a dystopia where females were certainly the greatest sufferers. It's chilling to think of the possibility of Margaret Atwood's fantasy becoming reality.
The Handmaid's Tale is told from the perspective of Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. Offred is old enough to remember the time when she made her own money and had a family of her own that she loved. She grew up and lived in a world similar to the one that we live in today. However, while Offred was still young enough to bear children things changed very greatly. Offred now has one job. She has sex with her "boss" every month in an attempt to get pregnant so that he and his wife can have children. Women in Offred's new world are not even allowed to read. She is, for want of a better word, nothing more than a sex slave.
One of the things that the book focuses on is Offred's desire for knowledge about the rebellions that are occurring. She is very curious. She believes that maybe her child and her husband are out there somewhere, just a rebellion away from her. However, traitors are arrested and sentenced to death. She must be very careful about her curiosity. She cannot be certain of who to trust and her role is such than she seldom speaks to anyone. So she has to even be careful of being seen talking.
Many things happen throughout The Handmaid's Tale that left me wondering how any society could ever become like the one described. At times it is evident that even her "superiors" are unhappy. The wife of the Commander, who is essentially her boss, seems discontent as does the Commander and many of the other people of lesser status that she encounters throughout the tale. This was a book that definitely left me thinking. The story and the characters haunted my dreams for several days after I finished reading. It is a book that provides much food for thought. I would recommend it to almost anyone.
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the screenplay by the same title has Faye Dunaway as the sterile spouse of the General Robert Duvall who rapes repeatedly Natasha Richardson in a "ceremony" of intended impregnation, but includes no use of lubrication and the rapist barely unzipping his pants while she is always in nun like shrouds pulled back at the direction of Dunaway...however the film begins with a family outing to go snow skiing & her son's father is murdered by the General's troops, she begs to learn of her son's where abouts from all the cult leaders & is promised such information in exchange for submitting to rape by both the General & his doctor who claims most of the top military types are "sterile" and to be relieved of repeated rapes, she should agree to be raped by the doctor who claims to be fertile, as pregnancy is the only escape from the culture of rape...a side tale of a lesbian in rebellion & escape leads to scenes where the cult of "handmaids" cheer on capital punishments for disobedients....our nation is dangerously close to becoming like the militarized sex cult, Nazi Germany became something like it for 13 years. German women were often told of their duty to breed for Deutchland while Jews & others were sterilized & murdered by the millions...
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