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I don't understand The Handmaid's Tale

Haphazard

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Seriously, I just finished this book, and then looking for answers I only come across sites that say "omg this book is SOOO RELEVANT to today" when I don't see it that way. At first I had figured that perhaps this vision of the future from the past was perhaps outdated (as the Jetsons or 1984 is today), but apparently it isn't? I dunno. What's up with this book?
 

ragashree

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From what I've heard it's just portraying a standard Sci-fi futuristic dystopia, nothing very interesting or original. The problem is that the author thinks she isn't a science fiction writer and has not written science fiction, and keeps making statements to that effect in order to implant the idea in the minds of journalists and the reading public. She therefore ends up being read, and most importantly reviewed, by the kind of literary snobs who wouldn't normally touch science fiction with a ten-foot bargepole. To them, not having come across such ideas before, it seems like she must be saying something orignal and insighful.

If her reputation had been built in the science-fiction genre rather than in mainstream literary fiction, no one would be taking the slightest notice of this book. (This is not intended as an attack on anyone who has read her, whether they like it or no, I'm just trying to discect the process by which her reputation in the genre may have been inflated.) George Orwell she ain't (though I suspect she would quite like to be) unless I'm really missing something here...
 

PeaceBaby

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That's pretty harsh on Margaret Atwood ragashree! Personally I think it is one of her best novels.

What exactly are you asking Haphazard? What answers are you looking for?

(I have read the book btw.)
 

Haphazard

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That's pretty harsh on Margaret Atwood ragashree! Personally I think it is one of her best novels.

What exactly are you asking Haphazard? What answers are you looking for?

(I have read the book btw.)

Is this what people really saw back when this book was written? It's like... looking into some kind of anachronism, more than so many books I've read.
 
F

figsfiggyfigs

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I read her book once in highschool a few yrs ago, I think it was the handmaids tale, not sure, I can't even remember jack. All I remember is the searing hatred I felt for this women and her books who stole hours of my life getting me to read it....
 

Haphazard

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Oh.

I liked the writing style, I just totally didn't get it. I guess I just feel like I'm missing something of vital importance to understanding this book.
 

Zarathustra

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Oh.

I liked the writing style, I just totally didn't get it. I guess I just feel like I'm missing something of vital importance to understanding this book.

Are you sure that you're missing something?

Could it be that it's missing something?
 

Haphazard

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Are you sure that you're missing something?

Could it be that it's missing something?

I've read a lot of books that didn't make any sense until I read the footnotes. However, I suppose most people think that The Handmaid's Tale is modern enough not to require footnotes... like, it feels like I'm missing historical context.
 

Litvyak

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Perhaps the sites are implying trends of re-emerging chauvinism and ultraconservativism as an answer to globalism? Gilead seems to be an example of religious fundamentalism dressed up in a western cloak of twisted values.
 

Haphazard

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Perhaps the sites are implying trends of re-emerging chauvinism and ultraconservativism as an answer to globalism? Gilead seems to be an example of religious fundamentalism dressed up in a western cloak of twisted values.

there seemed to be very little discussion of globalism in the book, though, just the use of ultraconservatism as a means to control and perpetuate the populace.
 

Zarathustra

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there seemed to be very little discussion of globalism in the book, though, just the use of ultraconservatism as a means to control and perpetuate the populace.

Hence why I don't think you feel you "get it", because, being alive 20 years later, this "trend" doesn't seem to be any more pervasive now then it was then, and at neither time was it really all that pervasive.

Her narrative sounds preachy, alarmist, and reactionary.

My guess is that you're just not convinced by her vision...
 

Haphazard

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Hence why I don't think you feel you "get it", because, being alive 20 years later, this "trend" doesn't seem to be any more pervasive now then it was then, and at neither time was it really all that pervasive.

Her narrative sounds preachy, alarmist, and reactionary.

My guess is that you're just not convinced by her vision...

Is that it? That it seems like this had a chance to happen, but it didn't, because we are not apt to plunge into depths of dystopia but instead suffer whiplash by being yanked back and forth?
 

PeaceBaby

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Are you sure that you're missing something?

Could it be that it's missing something?

Z, I am perplexed - you are offering opinions on a book you admittedly have never even read. Am I missing something here? How are you helping Haphazard?

H, maybe this link will assist: Books@Random | The Handmaid's Tale: Readers' Group Companion

Will give you more context. Then if you have specific questions, I need more than "I don't get it." If you ask something specific, it would be my pleasure to try to be a help.
 

Haphazard

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Z, I am perplexed - you are offering opinions on a book you admittedly have never even read. Am I missing something here? How are you helping Haphazard?

H, maybe this link will assist: Books@Random | The Handmaid's Tale: Readers' Group Companion

Will give you more context. Then if you have specific questions, I need more than "I don't get it." If you ask something specific, it would be my pleasure to try to be a help.

My first question, from reading the interview: has Margaret Atwood ever been to the United States for an extended period of time?
 

PeaceBaby

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^ I suppose when she went to Harvard ...

That would be in the 60's and I believe she taught in the US too, early 70's. Don't know if she's lived here more than that.

Edit: from good ol' Wikipedia:

In late 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University for 2 years, but never finished because she never completed a dissertation on “The English Metaphysical Romance” in 1967. She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-68), the University of Alberta (1969-70), York University in Toronto (1971-72), and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.
 

Haphazard

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^ I suppose when she went to Harvard ...

That would be in the 60's and I believe she taught in the US too, early 70's. Don't know if she's lived here more than that.

Weird.

For some reason the perspective in this story seems so immensely foreign while I do not get this feeling from Britlit or Germanlit or any of the other foreign books I've read...

also:

"They've found PCBs in polar bears and they are worried about the future of the polar bear species because PCBs build up in their systems and produce male sterility."

AHAHAHAHAHA.
 

PeaceBaby

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And you are laughing ...why?

"They've found PCBs in polar bears and they are worried about the future of the polar bear species because PCBs build up in their systems and produce male sterility."

AHAHAHAHAHA.

BBC News | Europe | Norway's androgynous polar bears

Norway's Polar Bears Suspected Victims of PCB Contamination ...

Polar bears hold key to understanding health risk of environmental pollutants

Then in the 1980s and 90s, Canadian and Scandinavian scientists showed that the bodies of polar bears contained high levels of industrial pollutants. Learning more about the extent to which the bears could break down and eliminate the chemicals dovetailed with James' expertise in how the body metabolizes drugs.

"There is no difference to the body in metabolizing a drug or a pollutant," she said. "The process is the same."

In her research, James concentrated on five types of chemical contaminants known by the acronym POP, for persistent organic pollutants. They include compounds produced by a burning process; a compound used as a substitute for the pesticide DDT when it was banned, and which itself was subsequently banned in 2004; TCPM, an industrial compound found in the Arctic but of unknown origin and toxicity; PCP, used as a wood preservative; and PCBs, industrial chemicals used for many years in electrical applications. All of these substances, with the exception of TCPM, are regulated or banned, but they persist in the environment.

Polar bears break down these fat-soluble chemicals in two steps, each of which makes the substances more water-soluble and therefore easier to excrete, said James. The first step, however, results in a compound that is more chemically reactive and therefore more harmful to living cells, with the potential for reproductive or neurological damage. The second phase, often slower than the first, determines how successfully the animals eliminate the toxins, she said.

Studying liver tissue samples obtained from the bears, James found that the animals were surprisingly efficient at metabolizing one of the types of industrial chemicals studied – those produced by a burning process, which are similar to the compounds that form when meat is cooked on a grill. The other pollutants, she determined, could not be fully excreted.

"This suggests that other species will metabolize the pollutants more slowly," said James. "When they are not sufficiently excreted the levels go up."

EPA Bans PCB Manufacture; Phases Out Uses | EPA History | US EPA

Some Facts About PCBs
 
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