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A review by lapislazulia
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
4.0
I protected myself from this novel as long as I could.
For the first few chapters, I wrapped myself in a cloak of stylistic critiques, derisive comments on the subject of punctuation use, half-remembered scornful quips about the author shared in class by a ninth-grade English teacher.
When that fell away, replaced by an unshakeable, begrudging respect for Atwood and her vision, I found solace in what I felt to be an inherent flaw in the narrative. It was impractical; it was just outside my suspension of disbelief. Huxley and Orwell and all those others show us regimes which have grown far past infancy. We are never shown how society reached that point, at least in nothing more than broad strokes, generalizations. Because of this, it's easier to believe. The people in those future worlds don't know any other way; a dissonance between the values of the reader and of the characters is necessary for the creation of a dystopia, and how can that be created unless this future, dystopic world is the only thing the characters have ever known?
I have a long-standing argument with my friends regarding Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I would rather be dead than live in that society, I say. No you wouldn't, they reply. If you were born into that world, you wouldn't even know what you're missing. That's the entire point. I disagree. I always disagree, but they raise a solid point. You can't take your own values into that world. I wouldn't be me if I lived there, shaped by the values of, and my experiences in, the twenty-first century. I would be some other girl, some Lenina, blissfully ignorant of any life but this.
I shielded myself with this argument, this line of thought. Our narrator is still herself. She is the first generation living in her dystopian regime. She knows our world, the reader's world, ball caps and blue jeans and freedom. Society can't change that fast, I told myself. In my head, I drafted the first few lines of my inevitable review. While spinning an engaging, thought-provoking world, Atwood fails to sell the plausibility of her dystopic vision...
Terrifyingly, suffocatingly plausible. That's what it was, once Atwood finally stopped dancing around the flashbacks and time jumps and told the tale of how our world became Offred's. Chapter twenty eight.
I was reminded of China and the Cultural Revolution. That was real. That happened. The Lost Generation, they call them, those that grew up in those years. How quickly society could change. Back to old values, they said. Get rid of capitalism, the bourgeoisie element of society. Universities were burned, the ruling parties were cleansed. The Red Guard rallied to destroy the four olds... Old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. Mao's wife was a force. She used to be an actress, I think. That was real. That happened.
This could be real. This could happen.
Granted, Atwood's is not a perfect book, but it does succeed in conveying an atmosphere of psychological horror, a series of deep, paralyzing realizations. The terrific, dawning understanding of the handmaids' names, for instance. The epilogue, as it were, is also intriguing, a sociological framework that is able to juxtapose the darkness of all that came before with ironic levity.
Deep and thought provoking, I have the feeling that this novel, like Brave New World, will be one to stick with me for a long time to come.
For the first few chapters, I wrapped myself in a cloak of stylistic critiques, derisive comments on the subject of punctuation use, half-remembered scornful quips about the author shared in class by a ninth-grade English teacher.
When that fell away, replaced by an unshakeable, begrudging respect for Atwood and her vision, I found solace in what I felt to be an inherent flaw in the narrative. It was impractical; it was just outside my suspension of disbelief. Huxley and Orwell and all those others show us regimes which have grown far past infancy. We are never shown how society reached that point, at least in nothing more than broad strokes, generalizations. Because of this, it's easier to believe. The people in those future worlds don't know any other way; a dissonance between the values of the reader and of the characters is necessary for the creation of a dystopia, and how can that be created unless this future, dystopic world is the only thing the characters have ever known?
I have a long-standing argument with my friends regarding Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I would rather be dead than live in that society, I say. No you wouldn't, they reply. If you were born into that world, you wouldn't even know what you're missing. That's the entire point. I disagree. I always disagree, but they raise a solid point. You can't take your own values into that world. I wouldn't be me if I lived there, shaped by the values of, and my experiences in, the twenty-first century. I would be some other girl, some Lenina, blissfully ignorant of any life but this.
I shielded myself with this argument, this line of thought. Our narrator is still herself. She is the first generation living in her dystopian regime. She knows our world, the reader's world, ball caps and blue jeans and freedom. Society can't change that fast, I told myself. In my head, I drafted the first few lines of my inevitable review. While spinning an engaging, thought-provoking world, Atwood fails to sell the plausibility of her dystopic vision...
Terrifyingly, suffocatingly plausible. That's what it was, once Atwood finally stopped dancing around the flashbacks and time jumps and told the tale of how our world became Offred's. Chapter twenty eight.
I was reminded of China and the Cultural Revolution. That was real. That happened. The Lost Generation, they call them, those that grew up in those years. How quickly society could change. Back to old values, they said. Get rid of capitalism, the bourgeoisie element of society. Universities were burned, the ruling parties were cleansed. The Red Guard rallied to destroy the four olds... Old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. Mao's wife was a force. She used to be an actress, I think. That was real. That happened.
This could be real. This could happen.
Granted, Atwood's is not a perfect book, but it does succeed in conveying an atmosphere of psychological horror, a series of deep, paralyzing realizations. The terrific, dawning understanding of the handmaids' names, for instance. The epilogue, as it were, is also intriguing, a sociological framework that is able to juxtapose the darkness of all that came before with ironic levity.
Deep and thought provoking, I have the feeling that this novel, like Brave New World, will be one to stick with me for a long time to come.