The Handmaid’s Tale
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel about a future where birth is prized above all else, ironically enough, including human life. It follows our Narrators story as she tells how this new horrifically authoritarian world has come to be, and her role within its strict confines. How her job is to have the Commanders baby, and then be moved onto the next household.
The story is told in her words, but a lot of it feels purposefully disjointed. Like she’s trying to wrap her head around how all this happened so quickly. How the world fell apart seemingly overnight. She even apologises later in the book for not having all the answers. The information she tells us is often gossip, word of mouth, heresy. Some things she’s witnessed and recounted to us, but even then we often don’t know the why’s.
What happened to the last Handmaid in the Commanders household? Just how much does the wife know about the going ons’s inside the home? Why are people executed and displayed on a wall? Did that one man really rape someone? What happened to her friend? Her mum? Is there some kind of resistance? Where’s her husband? Her daughter? The narrator can speculate, and put together some information, but something is always missing, and that’s what makes the book so intriguing.
It’s not a story with a lot of action, or even dystopian nastiest as she’s not privy to a lot of it, but it is a book with a lot of questions, and you’re always turning the page hoping she finds some answers.
And the Narrator is a very interesting character in her own right. She could be considered far from perfect even before the nightmarish future took hold, but she’s also massively a victim. Someone who if she did know the answers to the above questions would probably kill herself. She’s one bad confirmed fact away from suicide throughout, yet she’s trying to find things to hold on too. Dreaming that her husband isn’t dead, that her daughter is ok, that maybe one day life will be better.
The Handmaid’s Tale is brilliantly written. Margaret Atwood has full control over the often whimsical prose. The words flow beautifully, yet describe such terrifying situations. It’s almost awkward at times. You find yourself laughing in all the wrong places. It’s not that Atwood undermines the severity of the situation, it’s more a coping mechanism. The Narrator often acknowledges her mean spirited thoughts, but this is a mean world.
I really enjoyed this one, and sped through it. The ending may leave some frustrated, but there was no other way to really end the book given the perspective throughout. Everything about the world was interesting, yet it’s a world you want to avoid. Yes I would have liked to peak behind the curtain a little, but I know the answers already. Plus, isn’t the unknown sometimes more terrifying. A great, unique, brilliantly written read.
