#Like real mean. And one meek guy tries to tell the groom but the groom is kinda a dismissive asshole about it bc he's already paid the guy

[kingprinceleo]

Oh fuck me fuckme fuck me

[vaultofqueenorion]

Review of The Handmaid’s Tale

This book hit me like a ton of bricks. I get a sick feeling every time I think seriously of it, and it chilled me all the way to the bone. And yet, it is such an incredible book, in all its psychological horror. I think the worst part is that I see attributes and slivers of the book in everyday life. There’s a truth to it, and it doesn’t ring hollow. 

Read the book. But read the book only if you can stomach it, because it is truly gruelling. I would never call this a good book. Interesting, observant, thought-provoking, yes. But it is not one that has ever or ever will bring me entertainment.

Trigger warnings / TW / Content warnings: the book goes into detached detail with rape, forced pregnancy, murder, hanging, angry mobs tearing apart living people, shootings, killings, massacres and total oppression. Do not read if you are sensitive to any of these subjects. 

The Title

The title befits the book in two ways; first, it is the tale of Offred (as we know her only), a handmaiden to the Commander. The Commander is likely Frederick R. Waterford, as is discussed in the epilogue of the book, but that is never confirmed. 

What is a handmaiden, you ask, if you have never seen the popular Hulu series or heard of the book. A handmaiden is a woman (girl in the book to remove agency) that is ‘bound’ to a married couple who are unable to conceive children - in the book, we hear only of the whereabouts of the handmaidens of the Commanders and their Wives. 

The handmaiden is stripped of her name, her family, her identity, and she has to serve the couple - she is forced to give them children in a twisted ritual that apparently has root in biblical texts. Basically, she is raped in the presence of the couple in order to bear children for barren women who could otherwise not do so. 

The title also refers to the name of the ‘item’ which is a series of cassettes written into a manuscript discussed at the conference of the ‘Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies’ in the year 2195. 

It is a has-been; a recollection of the events recorded by the same woman from whom we read the story, and the speaker at the conference makes several jokes throughout his speech to keep the mood light and the audience entertained. 

It is a detached study in the history of America when it crumbled to a totalitarian patriarchal society that oppressed women in drastical terms and through drastic means. 

The Characters

Offred is meek yet strong-willed. Outspoken yet scared. It is as if she lives as a chameleon, never quite touching the ground of who she really is, but instead latching on to the world and society around her. 

The most remarkable thing about her is, in fact, her normality. She wonders, she becomes angry and yet she doesn’t do anything. Because what can one person do against overwhelming odds? When the other option is death, do you choose to live in submission?

The quote is one that I feel sums up her character. Instead of raging at the world like the heroes we see in stories, she tries to change the very core of her being to align with the wishes of new society. 

She does what many ordinary people would do, simply because fear is one damn powerful motivator. She feels she has no other choice. And she holds on to hope, throughout it all. Hope that she might - just might - see her daughter or her husband again. Hope that she might break free. 

We never do find out whether she finds absolution for that hope or not. 

The Commander lives a parallel life to the handmaidens. In all actuality it seems he lives a parallel life to the women of the dystopian world. He says that he wants Offred to have a pleasant or at least bearable existence, but what he does is that he gets her to indulge in things that he wants to do. He dresses her up and parades her around in secret bars where other girls are ‘working’ as if he owns her - which shows us that he kind of believes that he does. 

Even when he gives Offred something - a magazine - he doesn’t really think of how it is for her.

It is not only ignorance - it is also a lack of wanting to know. He simply doesn’t care enough about her existence to know that she cannot do so. Or he pretends to, playing the ‘good guy’ who doesn’t have anything to do with the hellscape Offred lives in. 

The thing is, this kind of ignorance is commonly participated in throughout society - just take a look at the men who say that they suddenly ‘understand how women feel’ when they pose as women online. Or the white people who ‘never knew how bad POC had it’ because they simply never bothered to look. 

It just hits a little too close to home, that’s all.

Serena Joy / the Commander’s wife is a chilling person. To be a woman, to see what is being done to other women, and yet still somehow hating them for it, as if it isn’t the higher up around her - including her own husband - who have orchestrated this. 

And then there’s this quote:

It does have several meanings to it. To Joy it means that she longs for children, that she wants them so badly that she will do anything in her power to get them. To Offred it means that if she cannot provide a strange family with children through rape, she will be shipped off to a faraway place where she will likely starve to death

Perspective, indeed.

Offred wants so desperately for her friend and the personification of the rebellion in her mind, Moira, to go out in a ball of fire. To burn the whole damn thing to the ground and either walk away, a cigarette in hand, or die trying. 

It seems that there is something in her that longs to be near her, as if Moira is the ideal that she strives towards, and when she never hears from her or sees her again, there is a melancholy and yet an emptiness to her words. 

She talks about their relationship once, before it all went to hell, and this quote is from that:

Luke. Luke, Luke, Luke. Offred misses Luke, and of course she does. He was her husband, the man she was waiting on while he cheated on his then partner, and the father of Offred’s daughter. And yet. 

I hated him so much. 

Just the mention of him sent spiders crawling down my spine, and really, the cheating was bad enough. Even worse was the small signs of misogyny - him saying that Offred losing her job was no big deal, that they would get through it together. Him joking with her about it - about how she could stay at home now, how he would have the power. 

No, I really didn’t like that casual display of superiority. 

Offred’s daughter is part of the next generation of Wives. Sent off to some lucky childless family, this eight year old girl will be groomed and bred into the oppression around her, and at some point, she will stop questioning the world. 

After all, as Aunt Lydia said to Offred:

Offred’s mother is a full-blooded feminist, which causes her to be shipped off to die early on. She’s an abortion advocate, and one of her most telling quotes is:

As a reply to when Offred in the past says that Luke’s teasings are nothing. But the mother understands. Understands the work that it has taken to get this far, and the work that needs to be done, lest they slip back into oppression.

And you know what? People languished in their complacency at the time of the coup, and the totalitarian society crept into the shadows, settling more and more and consuming the light as time passed by.

The Plot

The plot is really not the remarkable part of this story. Yes, Offred goes to town, befriends a fellow handmaid (this one is part of the resistance, peeps!), attends the ceremony, is taken to the Commander’s office, then later to the forbidden bar. 

The places aren’t so much important as what Offred observes. The small injustices, the doctors and scientists handing from the Wall, the Particicution in which the handmaids tear a man apart because he has allegedly raped someone (which is then told to be untrue; he is part of the resistance group, and handmaids murdering him with their bare hands is a good way for the totalitarian government to get rid of him). 

In truth, the handmaids have no real chance of getting themselves out, if they do not collaborate with Mayday, the resistance group. In truth, they are stuck in their miserable places, and that is why one of the earliest quotes from Offred is so chilling:

This is also why the handmaids live with the bare minimum of utilities - they are watched as they bathe, no light fixtures are present, matches are forbidden, knives unsupervised are forbidden. 

Because so many have killed themselves in desperation to get out of the hell that they have found themselves in. 

The Language

Margaret Atwood especially puts focus on the horror of the world that Offred lives in through two means; the conference / historical notes at the end of the story which brings a light and humorous view on the totalitarian society, and the on-the-verge-but-not-quite tone of hopelessness that Offred uses to describe her tales through. 

Aunt Lydia is often the catalyst for this kind of hopelessness. In the times where Offred tried to convince herself that this really is better. That the world is not quite as bleak, and that she actually has it better now than before.

It is a form of brainwashing that is already beginning to form. And what else can she do, one might think. She has to survive somehow. 

And yet, she brings herself to rekindle a fire once in a while. To open the lid on the anger, the resentment, the fierce cruelty of the world that she is faced with. It is something that she does internally, and one of the more prominent moments of this is when she is faced with the Commander in his office. 

The butter in this scenario refers to a tiny rebellion - an act of survival in a way that goes against the schemes and oppression of the world around the handmaidens. The most telling thing is that he laughs at her - as if the way of coping, the secret tips that are being shared between the handmaidens is nothing more than child’s play.

And it probably is to him. 

With a good standing, a good life and a sweet deal compared to the majority of this society that he helped create, he would never think to ‘stoop’ to such methods. 

The oppression is strong in this one, is all I have to say. 

Notes and worthy mentions

The Ceremony. Ooooh, the Ceremony. Of the most convoluted, terrible scenes I have ever had the displeasure of reading, this detached form of rape, explained as the rape is occuring, was terrifying and horrifying and I really, truly never want to read anything like it again.

Also, Offred calls it something else. She doesn’t want to call it rape, because she feels as if she had a choice - not much choice, but still choice. 

One thing that ticked me off was the mention of Mayday and the Underground Femaleroad - the latter a smuggling ring made to get the women out of their horrible positions. 

And the person at the historical conference calls it a Frailroad. Yes, it’s a shortening of female and road, but dang. And the worst thing is? It is totally realistic as to how it would probably be called - just look at how we treat the witch trials or say feminazi if a feminist speaks up about something that’s a ‘little too radical’. I call BS, is all, even if it just goes to show that Margaret Atwood knows what she’s doing when she writes. 

In conclusion

It is not a good book. It is magnificent in the way it portrays something that many women feel at least slivers of and amplifies them in a way that pierces your heart and leaves you dangling at its mercy. 

Books are meant to entertain, yes, but they are also meant to challenge, to inquire, and to make you think. Rarely has a book stayed with me for this long after I have read it, and rarely have I seen more parallels from the world we live in capable of being drawn to this hellscape that Margaret Atwood has created.

There is truth in this horrifically fantastic book. And this means that I cannot help but give it five paws out of five. The alternative would have been to have given it zero, but the thing is that I have seen society in such a new light after reading this that it wouldn’t have been fair.