Literary Speculation: The Handmaid's Tale (5 Points)

 The critically acclaimed novel that has a critically acclaimed show as well has proved itself to be somewhat a classic in its own right. This take on a futuristic utopian/dystopian society is taken through the eyes of a feminist commentating on how she feels about her life in a patriarchal society, especially compared to nowadays and 1985, when the book was originally published. In this society, “it is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, quasi-Christian, totalitarian state, known as Gilead, that has overthrown the United States government” (sorry I just feel like Wikipedia easily sums it up perfectly). Our main character, Offred, begins describing her life being conditioned to do as she was told and was stripped of her rights only to do what her traditional societal role as a woman, which was essentially becoming a birth-giving machine forced to have sex with the Commander in order to help stabilize the birth rates after the decline of them due to ecological decline.

This style of writing I think was crucial to take from not only the main character who is a woman but from a writer who is a woman as well. I think the way the author describes things and uses comparisons to heighten the descriptions of objects or feelings or really aids the visual development and the world. Things aren’t purely described as just what they are, but in a way that includes and attaches emotion to these objects. I think that this is a much more effective style of writing because instead of just saying this character feels this or this made the character feel like that, the emotion is already laced in how the characters see things so since were are the reader, we are already able to have the advantage of the internal point of view of the characters and are able to see the world from their lens.

That is, through the lens of a woman who experienced a patriarchal society herself. I feel like this novel is in a way an insider’s perspective on Margaret Atwood’s own perspective on how she feels like she lives life.