A review by samanthaardenlockheart
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

5.0

Margaret Atwood has a very talented way of writing and conveying the emotions of her characters. Offred, or June, who is the main character, lives in a theocratic dictatorship called the Republic of Gilead and because of her child-bearing abilities, she is subjected to dehumanization and emotional trauma of the worst kind. In Gilead, her only value is within her fertile womb. She is rendered a Handmaid, only allowed to wear completely red robes with white wings that cover her face at all times, especially when she is outside of the house. Women who can not have children most often are known as Wives who live with men called Commanders. The Commanders have the duty of engaging in sexual intercourse with the Handmaids every single month. Offred’s Commander is named Fred Waterford, and his wife is called Serena Joy. This intercourse is performed solely for the purpose of conceiving a baby, and unsurprisingly, it is often mechanical and certainly non-consensual. Atwood formally calls this The Ceremony. As a girl, imagining this happening to me is very frightening, yet something about the Handmaid’s Tale is very poetic and enlightening. It tells the story through the eyes of a fictional person who is experiencing an utter hell on Earth and is practically begging for her old life back. Stories like this truly help me feel thankful for all of the freedoms I do have. As I write this, I’m getting an education at an excellent university, I have a loving family and wonderful friends, and I have the freedom to read, write, watch, and believe whatever it is that I want. These are all tangible and intangible concepts June, other Handmaids, along with everyone else in Gilead—and, of course, millions of people in the real world—simply do not have. In our society, are so free to love and see all of the beauty that exists in the world despite the evilness that seems to plague us. It is worth noting that a few core themes of this book are certainly suffering, violence, longing, freedom, and passion. A quote from the Handmaid’s Tale that shook me to my core was, “Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.” Wow. Such a truly disarming, terrifying, and beautiful passage from Margaret Atwood. There are some aspects of violence and somewhat vivid descriptions of issues that might be unsettling, so do take that into account. Nevertheless, this story in its entirety is a very compelling read as well, so I would highly recommend it.