Summary

This is the story of Offred, a handmaid, living in America. A handmaid is a woman whose sole purpose of existence is to produce children for the high commanders in The Republic of Gilead. The organization of this Republic is such that a handful men have all the power.

The interaction night between the commander and the handmaid is called the ceremony and is conducted in the Commander’s Wife's presence. Refuse to co-operate and, they would be hanged at the Wall or, worse, sent into the gutters to die a slow and painful death exposed to life-threatening chemicals and radiation. In between all this unimaginable cruelty in her world, Offred needs to keep looking for her daughter and husband, living in the hope that they are still alive.

Novels By Margaret Atwood

My Review

You cannot but ask- What is this compelling necessity that brought society to these levels? There was even a training institute with Aunts following Hitlerism running the place for fertile women where they were taught all the intricacies of living a subdued life sacrificed to breeding.

The novel's writing is brilliant, no doubt, but sometimes it got too abstruse and heavy for me. But my favorite part was the portrayal of the characters. It was beyond brilliant. I felt the Offred’s fears and disorientation, Serena Joy’s anguish, Commander Fred’s genuine kindness, Nick’s audacity, and Aunt Lydia’s brute force.

Poetry and Short Stotries by Margaret Atwood

I got so involved and was so shocked that I had to remind myself this novel is Fiction. The horrendous and inhuman living conditions described will send a chill down the stiffest spines. I felt real pain for Offred when finally, in her story, she accepted defeat and said- “all I want to do is keep on living. For that, I resign my body freely to the use of others.”

At the end of my copy of the book, there was the transcription of a History lecture based on the novel, where historians were verifying this story's trueness, and the claims surprisingly mentioned the existence of such a republic and its citizens in the past. The transcription ends with a remarkable conclusion by the speaker, “The past is great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it, but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come, and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day”.

Who Should Read This

I recommend this classic only to adult readers beyond 18, owing to adult themes of torture, sex, and rape.

Final Verdict

If you want to be zapped by a story and shocked into the realization of real issues faced by real women, read this story. I rate it five out of five stars, obviously, because it does the job a book is meant to do- it holds your attention throughout.

Happy reading!

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