The Handmaid's Tale

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating and horrific look into the future...
Review: I had this book on my bookshelf for three years before I finally decided to read it. Now I'm kicking myself for waiting so long! The Handmaid's Tale is awesome and it has completed my favorites list of 2002. Highly recommended.

Margaret Atwood's story is set in the future after the United States has undergone a nuclear war and the government has been destroyed. In place now is a strict and dangerous political scene, where any type of crime can result in an execution and a public hanging on The Wall. Not only that, but women are made secondhand citizens and are no longer able to hold jobs, make money, read or write.

The Handmaid's Tale is told through the eyes of Offred in the former state of Massachusets, now called the Republic of Gilead. Offred is a Handmaid, or a surrogate mother of sorts, who is appointed to an infertile couple in order to get pregnant and help boost the population. However, it isn't as easy as that since the only legal way to get pregnant is the old-fashioned way, which causes jealousy and tension throughout the household. And with the rigorous government, Offred isn't allowed to complain or refuse unless she wants to be shipped off to clean up toxic nuclear waste for the rest of her life.

I absolutely loved this book and will recommend it to all my book friends. The Handmaid's Tale is the perfect book for book clubs as it will evoke numerous discussions on feminism, nuclear war, radical government policies, slavery, etc. Margaret Atwood poses the question of "what if?" and one can only hope that this tale remains fiction. Excellent, thought-provoking, fascinating and heart-pounding -- this novel will never be forgotten.

Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Book. Wow!
Review: The handmaid's tale begins in modern America in the late '80s or early '90s and is told by Offred (not her real name). One day Offred goes to buy a pack of cigarettes at a corner store to find that her credit card (cash is no longer legal tender) does not work. She gets to work and is fired from her job, as are all the other women there. In Washington, someone has gunned down the president and congress. Martial law is established and the constitution is suspended. While fleeing to Canada to escape the reality of awful rumors, Offred and her family are captured and separated. Due to recent nuclear accidents, many people have become sterile and, this is the new "Gileadean government's" attempt to ensure a continuation of the population. People are stripped of their freedoms and women like Offred are forced to perform as handmaidens to supply the barren wives of commanders with children. The handmaid's sole purpose is now for childbearing. Women are no longer allowed to read, wear makeup, or even use lotion. The new government bases its actions on words from the Bible. However, Offred remembers the words they quote "from the Bible" as having different lines. But, without the right to read, she cannot prove this. This is the story of Offred and her terrifying new world. May it remain fiction forever! Atwood has created a new and frightful culture in her book. THE HANDMAID'S TALE is, by far, the best book I have read to date. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down except to sleep. This is one of those books that the author will probably never be able to top. Wow! It can be compared to Brave New World or 1984 for it's eerie view of a possible and horrifying future. This book should be required reading for everyone.

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Summary: Harvard's study guide for Atwood's dystopian novel
Review: I picked up the Spark Notes for Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" because I am using it for a Science Fiction class I am teaching and I always like to try and pick up most of the study guides that students might, uh, use, in writing their papers (yes, I have had students turn in papers typed up directly from such works). In terms of this small blue volume's contents, here is what you will find:

(1) Plot Overview, a 3-page summary of the entire novel; (2) Character List, which actually provides brief descriptions of 14 characters; (3) Analysis of the Major Characters, providing brief looks at Offred, the Commander, Serena Joy, and Moira; (4) Themes (e.g., Women's Bodies as Political Instruments), Motifs (e.g., Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes) & Symbols (e.g., The Handmaid's Red Habits), each of which are developed enough to give readers an understanding of the concept that could lead to a nice paper without providing enough to actually plagarize (a plus from my perspective); (5) Summary & Analysis of the book, broken down into groups of 3 to 5 chapters at a time, with summaries of each chapter and then a summary of the overall group; (6) Important Quotations Explained looks at five rather long quotations from the book, all of which are set up in the Summary & Analysis section; (7) Key Fact provides a nice three page summary of everything from the novel's genre to Atwood's use of foreshadowing; (8) Study Questions & Essay Topics; and (9) Review & Resources, including a quiz, a glossary of terms, and suggestions for further reading.

Yes, this little blue book created by Harvard students for students everywhere ("Smarter Better Faster") can help you fake having read the book, which is a shame because Atwood is such a great writer. For me the key part is always the analysis and concepts, all of which serve to help students get some critical insights into the work. If they get that from this book rather than me, then that would still qualify as having no insights at all. The final question, of course, is how does this Spark Notes stack up against its Cliff Notes counterpart? I would have to say it comes in a close second, mainly because with regards to "The Handmaid's Tale," Cliff Notes has a chapter by chapter vocabulary list that explains key terms and phrases, which is always a big asset with students reading the novel (Spark Notes has as many titles and terms for the entire book as the other offers up for some of the chapters).

Rating:
Summary: Futuristic exaggeration of real American past.
Review: When I read this story, I wondered what led the author to imagine this. It is placed in the future as a horror story but what it speaks to me is the unwed mother home and the nearly forced adoptions in the 50's and 60's in this country. I was there, I know.
Substitute Sister for Aunt and you have the authority figures, described as childless or infertile, with a belief in "traditional values", possessing power over the other women, which is described as the best way to control the procreation of the women. They may not have had cattle prods, but they certainly had power. The outfits of the handmaids are actually described as "habits" and the headdresses look almost exactly the same as the Daughters of Charity headdresses, who managed many of the homes.
What happened there? The handmaids were only allowed out two by two. Any girl that cried was considered a crybaby. Whose fault was all this? OUR fault, all of it 100%. The father didn't exist. Am I talking about the book or the home? Both. We were brainwashed with the nobility of "doing the right thing" by giving the child up. The adoptive parents were "saving us". All through the book is the religious and psychological propoganda they used to control the handmaids. When Offred's first child was taken away, they told her "She's in good hands, they said, with people who are fit. You are unfit, but you want the best for her. Don't you?" A phrase right out of the adoption agency.
I was cowed too, until it was too late. Then I realized the truth. The rich adoptive parents paid money to the agency and the goal of the home was to take our children and give them to the adoptive parents. It was Commanders' families that had the power to inflict this on us. Any girl who refused was kicked out, a "bad example". I saw it happen. The girls were pitted against each other so you thought the problem was the other girl, when the real danger was being there at all.
I read through most of the ratings on this book and I am surprised I didn't find anyone else who noticed this, because there are other birth mothers I know find this book traumatic. Maybe too traumatic to read.

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Summary: Why We Must Exercise Our Right to Think
Review: Imagine a world where you suddenly can't think your own thoughts. A world where you must forego being human, and become a machine, performing on demand, never feeling, just giving.

This is a story, similar to a George Orwell, "1984." But in this story the world has taken away women's right to read, dress however they want, play, and move about, on their own terms.

It is a wonderful book to read, to place yourself in this world, and befriend each of the characters, so that you come out appreciating the little things that we have, as a result of the risks that many took before us.

And although this book is clearly written for women, I think it's a great read for the man who wants to break out of the traditional-male thinking, and not feel like he is being emasculated.

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Summary: Just look at chapter 16...
Review: Once I read chapter 16, I was ready to read the book in one sitting. I didn't however, as I was rather excited and had to go relieve myself.

Rating:
Summary: the best book EVER
Review: The Handmaid's Tale is a GREAT book. If you don't agree with me, you are WRONG.

Rating:
Summary: waste of time
Review: If I could have given this book no stars I would have. What a waste of time - it was as boring and repetitive as anything I've ever read. I'm a woman and I suppose I should have identified more with the underlying message, but all I could see was the insult to my gender. I finished it ony because my daughter is taking a literature class in college, it was assigned reading for the class, and I promised her I would read all the books so we could discuss them. Had it not been for my promise, I would have stopped reading after the first 20 pages. Yuck! This is my first Margaret Atwood book, and if it's representative of her entire body of work, I'll never read another one.

Rating:
Summary: Frighteningly Prescient
Review: This is a work of speculative fiction that takes place in a dystopia of the near future, a totalitarian government in the former United States.
The particulars of the story serve to describe this society and I will not go into the details here as they are available in the editorial reviews, except to say that because the society's repressive laws are misogynous and are couched in terms of Biblical laws and mythologies it may seem to be an indictment of evangelical Christianity and it is actually so much further reaching than that. Subtle warnings about a clever and devious conservative white male think tank that in all probability is utterly devoid of any actual spiritual motivation and whose primary focus is the self-preservation of their elite privileged lifestyle in the face of its own self-destructive biological consequences are to be found here. Subtle warnings abound in this story and it behooves one to look at oneself as well. Short-sightedness and perfunctory utility are the destroyers of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This is a well-realized society that Atwood has created, one that is utterly repressive in every way. The book is well-paced, well written and masterfully conceived. So complex and thought provoking is the book that it is one of the few modern day works of fiction to be the subject of a Cliffs Notes study guide.
I found it particularly interesting that this book was published in 1985 and yet it warns of a paperless society, plastic and numerical money, and universal identification cards among other aspects of modern times that do, in fact, seem to be a coming reality. Ironically, the narrator of the story, a completely objectified, sexual commodity, enslaved and utterly repressed by the government, prior to the coups d'etat, worked as a transcriber in a university library and her task was to transcribe books onto compact disks in order to maximize space. As long as she still had the illusion of liberty and was being paid, she never questioned the danger of her job to civil liberty as a whole. Atwood's allusion to the reality in modern times of an insidious Fahrenheit 451 attitude, ostensibly for practicality's sake, is just one of the chilling warnings presented in this book.
In one passage of remarkably prescient writing Atwood describes the actual day of the takeover thus: "It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control."
I find it exceedingly interesting and frightening that our true-life catastrophe of 9-11 has already caused us to lower our guard and allow serious incursions into our civil liberties. We, like the Handmaid Offred in her earlier life, seem to be unconcerned so long as we are still getting paid and are still allowed our own personal familiar comforts. We are so complacent and so trusting. This book was a wake-up call seventeen years ago when it was published and today it is a warning siren against a gathering storm that we dare not plug our ears to ignor. Read it and think.

Rating:
Summary: Makes you think, if a bit heavy handed
Review: The Handmaid's Tale is definitely a work of literature. She means it to make a statement and for it to be included in college sylabi. Nevertheless it is a very readable book. I enjoyed it, even while casting a critical eye on the very clear political statement being made. Very much worth reading, especially because you'll want to talk about it and sound intellectual.
"Blessed be the fruit"