genre: dystopian fiction
Offred's world is a bleak one, living in a future society where plummeting birth rates and a patriarchal dictatorship have resulted in the rights of women being essentially obliterated. Those who are fertile are compelled to sire children for those in positions of power and violence towards any rebellion is par for the course. Offred's account of her experiences as a "handmaid" illustrates the depths to which people will sink in order to save their own lives as well as what the world can look like when society decides that women no longer have the right to choose their own destiny.
I read this when I was in college and I liked it okay. I don't know if I understood the intricacies of it and I for sure wasn't an adult who fully understood the plight of women nor a mother so some of Offred's pain escaped me. I think it confused me a bit, truthfully, because it's not told particularly chronologically. But this time, it felt timely in an almost sickening way. Some of it's graphic scenes bothered me but I think they bothered me exactly the way Atwood intended them to - we are supposed to be shocked, supposed to be outraged and disgusted. I love how plausible it is, how it's horror is so seeped in what societies and people in our world have already experimented with, with disastrous results. It made me think. It had my attention. The writing is actually really, really beautiful at times, sparse and lyrical and intricate. Is it pretty? No. Does it leave you with a bad taste in your mouth? Yes. And again, I think that's exactly what it's supposed to be.
Also, I LOVED the audio. Claire Danes does a great job narrating and I loved the full cast pieces as well. The essays at the end really fleshed out my reading for me and I found myself as involved in those as the novel itself. Timely indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment