Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing!!
Review: To those few of you who seem to find Atwood confusing and morbid, I feel that is the whole point of the story!!! Even though these situation may or may not happen in actuality, it makes everyone wonder. The point of the story is not to predict our future society, it is simply to tell an entertaing plot that tells a wonderful story. In my humble opinion, the actuality of this occuring in the twentieth century is null. However, it creates wonderment on whether we are inevitalbly getting closer to the fate of "The Handmaid's Tale".
Rating:
Summary: The scariest book I've ever read
Review: This book has affected me so much that every time I read a newspaper account of The Promise Keepers, or that male fertility has gone down, or the increase use of ATM's I am drawn back to this book. I've taught this book in an English comp class and all the class focused on was the sex and who played who in the movie. The flashback style adds to the bad dream quality of the story, just as OFFRED is lost in the nightmare, never knowing where she is, so is the reader. I hope someday to be able to use it a class where the themes are remembered by the students and not the RITUAL
Rating:
Summary: Future or Adaptation?
Review: While the Handmaid's Tale is an excellent book about the oppression Women and the risks of any form of fanatical regime, is it really meant to be a posssible look into the future? I tend to think that the book is made as metaphor for the oppression of women in countries like Iran. The thing that sticks out about this novel is simply the fact that it is set in a culture that we all know and recognise, It is supposed to shock us in the way that the fundamentalist regimes in middle-eastern countries can't because we don't live in them, and can't compare them without a similar context being portrayed on our own society. I believe this is the essence of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Chilling and fantastic
Review: A chilling and fantastic read, Atwood somehow
manages to bring a whole new world onto
the page. This book is one of the most
haunting I have read, if only becuase you
are entering the mind of this 'Puppet on A String' This is a fantastic insight into how the world could
become in the future
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good "Nightmare Future" tale in the tradition of Orwell
Review: This is a truly excellent book. Atwell is an excellent writer and I was intrigued by her nightmare vision of the future. I fail to understand, however, why this book is considered great enough as literature to be assigned as required reading by high school students. Wouldn't students be better served by reading George Orwell's classic? Perhaps Ms. Atwell's book is considered "great literature" because its' radical pro-feminist bent is considered politically correct material by liberal instructors to properly shape young minds! It seems that "Big Brother" may be at work after all.
Rating:
Summary: The Terror of Extremism
Review: What I felt to be the most important message of the book, was the idea that extremism of any sorts leads ultimately to the same tyranny. Offred goes to great lengths to comment not only on her own torturous existance, but also reflects on mother, a radical activist, and her friend Moira. The simularities between the radicals that lead the Republic of Gilead and her mother and Moira were similar in that they both wish to eradicate what they felt were "dangerous elements" in society. Most vivid of Ms. Attwood's examples were presenting Offred's memories of being with her mother (the activisit) as a crowd of women burned pornography, and illustrating the condemnation of the Gileadan ideologues of sexual material. Simultaneously, Offred recounts being involved in a group "taking back the night" in the pre-Gilead period, but then being pelted with messages from the Aunts (the indoctrinators of the Handmaids) about how women could not walk safely in the times before Gilead. These interesting juxtapositions are threaded throughout the novel, and illustrate how, in a sense, both sides of the political spectrum, the radicals of Offred's mother and the radicals of the sexist Gilead both utilized the same arguments (dangers of pornography and the threat to women) to justify acts of tyranny (book burnings and the removal of the rights of women). The message of the Handmaid's Tale is one of the dangers of moral absolutism and how any attempt to dominate society with one vision of social justice, for either good or bad intentions, will ultimately suffocate liberty.
Rating:
Summary: Really, really good. One of my favorites.
Review: Made an impact on me. Pushed me against the wall and forced me to think. ^_^
Rating:
Summary: Atwood was phenominial
Review: This book was wonderfully written, and lets your imagination take over, to create your own preception of Offred's future. However, the end leaves you unclear and with questions.......very very powerful reading. Could it be a warning?
Rating:
Summary: Our minds, our bodies
Review: The theme was chilling enough. But Offred's detachment from it all is worse. Her body is being used and her mind appears to have become a separate entity. Her mind wanders to her happy past while she is being raped once month by a man espousing the virtues of an evil government. She seems to view everything that has happened as though she were at a distance. She simply watches. Could this be a warning? Are we just watching what happens around us and never fighting against it?
Rating:
Summary: 1984 Revisited
Review: Aside from the beautiful writing (typical of the author) this is well worth reading to compare it with Orwell's 1984. It is modelled very closely on it, and makes a similar point: this ain't a prediction, it's how things are NOW!
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