WEEK 13: THE HANDMAID’S TALE

I have seen how successful the hit television series of “The Handmaid’s Tale” is, but never found interest in it before. Now that I’ve exposed myself to the raw, horrific drama created by Margaret Atwood, the show is on the top of my watch list. I really had no idea what this story was about until I opened it. First of all, I believed this to be more of a historical drama about a handmaiden in middle America. I had no idea that this was set in a future, dystopian America where everything regressed to worse times. I guess that’s what made it seem so traditional and not progressive, which is the direction that today’s society is heading towards. It is frightening to think that this could be a possible future for our society. I feel that this book dove deep into the mindset of not only women but men as well on the subject of misogyny and oppression. Atwood made an extremely clever connection to such a prominent social issue by making it even more visual with the segregation of colored dresses.

The way that the story was being told was quite interesting as well. I like that the novel focused mainly on Offred, but it also gave a lot of insight to other handmaids and supporting characters. This made me feel engaged, and the story felt more authentic. The genre of the story felt almost like drama, dystopian to me. I actually did not know that Dystopian was a subgenre under the umbrella term “speculative fiction,” so that was new. For me though, it doesn’t really matter what kind of label you put on a book. As long as the message is clear and the author was able to communicate it effectively, genre is just a tag to organize books on bookshelves. Knowing the genre didn’t change my perspective on the story in any way, but I guess it could lead to generalizations/ expectations in some cases. It was probably a smart choice to just go into the story blindly.

- ☽Stacy Moon☾