'The Handmaid's Tale'

My junior year I was blessed to have one of the best English teachers to ever exist. English teachers themselves are blessings already, but this one, Mrs. Harpster, has been one of the best. All year she'd recommend, subtly, her favorite book, which happened to be The Handmaid's Tale. She never revealed too much and as the year progressed the Hulu trailer began to accompany her two sentence explanations. Our entire class was intrigued. None of us got around to reading it, but it was in all of our minds. For that I thank her; however, that was a year ago... This year, my final long and drawn out year of high school, I was assigned an independent project. Many book titles were hurtled my way, but as soon as I saw The Handmaid's Tale on that list, I knew it was time. And time it was.

As I embarked on this journey I was nervous that I would be dedicating a week of my life to a dry and dull classic. I was afraid that the Hulu show had lied to me and that I was being abjectly set up for failure.

The Handmaid's Tale is told in whispers, a hushed recounting of a life Offred once lived. She is a woman who is broken, but from the moment we meet her, realize she is still moving forward and doing what she must to survive a world that wants nothing to do with her existence.

The world in which we meet Offred is bleak. Women are a resource and seen as nothing more than such; however, not all women are seen as valuable. The one thing that makes a women valuable is her ability to have kids. If she is found to be physically able she is given to a Commander and his Wife where monthly they must perform a ceremony in the hopes that they will be blessed with a child. As for other women who can not have children, they either become housemaids, Econwives—wives for men who are't that important—or Unwomen, women who can't have kids or have broken the laws. All are powerless no matter what their rank is, but the lesser women (housemaids and Econwives) arguably have the most freedoms.

This society is based in an America where a disease has left the population decimated, meaning only certain women can have babies. At some point a small radical religious group overthrows the US government and replaces the democracy with a totalitarian, theocratic, rooted in deep religious beliefs, state. They then call this new country the Republic of Gilead, which alludes to the thought of freedom or choice, when really that doesn't exist. Forcing women who are able to have children for strangers is seen as the greater good, for society's sake and for God's sake. But as Offred says, "Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some," and in the case of every single women in Gilead it's so much worse.

Despite the utterly disheartening and depressing setting and situation of the book, it remains hopeful.

I lend this to Offred, the woman who tells us her story as if we are sitting next to her pressed into the tiny space of her closet listening to whatever she can remember at the moment. The writing style may seem choppy and I've seen other reviews where it is called as such, but it is not jarring. It lets off an air of urgency and importance. Offred often interrupts herself interjecting with fond memories or events that happened previously, even in some cases events that she's reimagined going a different way. I believe the use of narrative in this sense is completely ingenious on Atwood's part. By the end of the book we have to accept that this is the end of Offred's story because whether we realized it or not the whole time she was telling us everything that she so desperately needed someone to hear. We are supposed to carry her tail with us and remember us. If we can close our eyes and imagine ourselves in her world it makes sense everything about how the book is presented to us makes sense. And in a way, it is also a warning, because if we can look at this book and at this society and see where if certain decisions were made we could end up the way Gilead is then we need to be careful not to make those mistakes.

At the end she was presented with a chance that we know she took, but we don't know how it changed her life, only that it did in a drastic way. The ending, with no real wrap up of all of the events that took place, does not feel like some drastic cliffhanger or something unwarranted and rushed in; it fits in with the story. She has been trying to tell us everything she can about her life past and present and we've finally caught up with her. We watch her from the closet as she escapes—to what we don't know—and that leaves a gnawing inside of us; or it did for me, at least. Knowing Offred, however, it also elicited hope. No matter where she was going to go, I know she would survive.

Offred finds hope in flowers and the life that they symbolize. They become a symbol of resilience and strength, a beacon of light in the darkness each and every time they are mentioned. As does she. I know that no matter what happened after Offred joined Nick that she survived. It is the one thing that clings to Offred more than the stories of everyone she has lost: her survival.

The Handmaid's Tale is a story about a woman who has lost everything, but still holds on. She holds on for the life she once lived and the one she hopes to live. It is a story of survival in the most touching and at times in even in the most comical of ways. Because of the way it deals with such harrowing and dehumanizing things in the most pure and soft of lights it's easily became one of my most favorites. I love this book and I now understand why Mrs. Harpster did too. In fact, I think it's impossible not to love.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”