Pros: A brilliant and terrifying glimpse of a horrifying future.
Cons: Maybe too close to the evening news for some. May also cause weight gain.
The Bottom Line: More than ever before, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale rings true. Perhaps by arming ourselves with the knowledge of one terrifying scenario, we may create a better future.
astrid's Full Review: Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
Today as I was driving to work, my local NPR station broadcast a request for listeners to call or email the station and report what, if anything, has changed about them since the September 11th terrorist attack. "Well," I thought grimly, "I've gotten bigger."
Yes, I'm one of those nervous nibblers--when my anxiety level increases, my body goes into preservation mode, which translates into "store enough fat to make it through the winter in case all the food gets tainted." I'm sure I've put on at least five pounds . . . which were warmly welcomed by all the other completely unnecessary pounds I'm carrying around with me.
Fortunately, my feeding mode is pretty much a hand, mouth, deep subconscious psyche thing, leaving my conscious mind free to think "My God, did I really eat that whole box of Oreos?!" and "Mmmm, my mashed potatoes are getting almost as good as Mom's!" while I read the news about the latest bio-terrorism fears and realities and watch film clips with names like "Women: Terror under the Taliban."
There was one film clip, in particular, in which a resistance movement in Afghanistan filmed a woman who addressed the camera and said in an quietly urgent voice "I need you to know that this is me . . . ." as she removed her veil. The film clip of her ended there (presumably, she did indeed reveal her full face to the camera, and it was withheld from the national news for her security), but I was struck with a sense of deja vu.
Later (I think it was when I was preparing a vat of homemade turkey chili), I listened to a group of journalists and politicians expound upon issues of national security. They concluded that U S citizens have been living in a dreamworld and that many of the freedoms we take for granted (moving around without ID, not having armed guards at most public sites) were going to be tested. Deja vu again!
It finally came to me when I read an article by a member of the Taliban in which he defended the lack of civil rights for women in Afghanistan by reminding us that before the Taliban took over, chaos reigned in Afghanistan--women were habitually raped and killed. The Taliban allowed women to retreat to a place of safety; behind their burqas, inside their homes . . . and my mind immediately flew to a scene in the film version of The Handmaid's Tale in which one of the Aunts (the female re-education officers) showed a video clip of a turbulent rally during the 60s. She says, "In those days, women had 'freedom to,' now you're being given 'freedom from' . . . don't underrate it."
"Yes," I thought, "that's it. The Handmaid's Tale." Margaret Atwood's dystopian vision of the successful coup of the United States by a Christian fundamentalist off-shoot, resulting in the loss of all civil rights for women, and most civil rights for everyone else. Like many women, I discovered The Handmaid's Tale early in college, found it brilliant, and read it several more times--each time scaring myself into a mini-feeding spree of anxiety, as I recognized how much of it was already true and how easy it might be for other parts to be realized.
The parallels between women's lives under Taliban rule and The Handmaid's Tale are shocking: Handmaids are concealed, their identities subsumed into their male guardian's identity; Afghani women are required to wear the full-body burqa and may not appear in public without a male relative. Members of the Republic of Gilead (Atwood's name for the former USA/Canada) are summoned to sports stadiums regularly for executions; Afghani resistance groups have been filming the public executions of women which have taken place in soccer stadiums built by relief organizations. Women of Gilead are forbidden to read; women in Afghani are not allowed to be educated. Frankly, even Atwood didn't imagine that women would be both not allowed to work and forbidden from seeking medical attention from anyone but a female doctor, thus ensuring that there is no medical care at all for women.
Of course, comparing the horrors of The Handmaid's Tale to life under the Taliban may not prompt anyone to buy several panic bags of candy corn. After all, we all know it's awful over there. We, thankfully, are here in the West, where things like that are impossible. Consider, though, the way in which the leaders of Gilead prepared their coup . . . they invaded network security. Our Handmaid, just as all the other members of her society, uses debit card or credit cards for nearly everything. One morning on the way to work, our Handmaid stops by a gas station for a pack of cigarettes. "I'm afraid your card isn't going through," the attendant tells her. "That's ridiculous," she sniffs. "Try it again." No, it's true. There doesn't seem to be any money in her account. The same thing happens all over the city--but it seems only to be happening to women's accounts. Within a couple of hours, the credit card companies have disabled their credit services due to panic. There is confusion and terror. Marshall law is invoked. Finally the word comes out that women's accounts have been closed, but that their funds have been placed in the accounts of their husbands, their fathers, their brothers. In order to have any chance at all of getting any of their money, women must silently accept the situation. Within weeks, months, the Republic of Gilead is established. And by the time our Handmaid writes her tale (a matter of several years at most), she has become reduced to a veiled number. She is nameless.
Perhaps there's something a bit sick about thinking of reading The Handmaid's Tale right now--after all, if we're living it, why read a fictionalized version? Well, first of all, because I believe that my feeding frenzy has probably reached a saturation point beyond which increasing my anxiety level has no effect on my appetite. But, more seriously, it is because dystopias can serve both as a warning and a solution. We become so deeply involved in our own world's problems, or so numb to the shock and horror that we see around ourselves, that we fail to see the ways in which we can avoid the horror. By reading The Handmaid's Tale, we are presented with a dystopian future, the majority of which hasn't yet occurred.
In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies? Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Comman...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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