Is Anybody Paying Attention

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood was one of those high school English class books that I didn’t read when everyone else did and never got back around to. That is - until now, because my dear cousin, Bear Matheson, gave it to me for my 24th birthday. Bear read it in high school, in a class that I didn’t take with my favorite English teacher because I was taking a different class with said teacher (reading King Lear, so I don’t regret it). Anyway, Mr. Morgan, if you’re reading this, I think Bear gave me his copy from your class because his name is written in it, high-school-text-book-style, and he didn’t annotate at all.

The first and most important thing that I have to say about this novel is that I wish to god I hadn’t watched the Hulu series before I read the book. I only watched the first season, and that was a while ago, but this story, especially brought to life in glaring color, is not easily forgotten. Unfortunately for me, this meant that I didn’t get to experience the best part of reading dystopian fiction while actually reading the fiction. I already knew what happened, so the slow unravelling of the world that Atwood creates, and the experience of gradually learning about the crazy new rules that govern a recognizable but horrifyingly distorted society was, at least partially, lost on me. This is not to say that The Handmaid’s Tale is not worth reading if you’ve seen the series - it most definitely is - but particularly in the early chapters, I was disappointed in myself for breaking the cardinal rule: read before you watch. It seems as though the basic outlines of the plot struck their way into general public knowledge around the time the series was released on Hulu, but I envy any person who can read this novel for the first time and be utterly shocked by it.

Shock factor acknowledged, Atwood’s tone is actually mostly matter-of-fact, with intermittent infusions of deep emotion. Even the moments when our narrator, Offred, is reflecting on terrifying and shocking moments from her past, there is a level of detachment, which makes things that aren’t normal feel…normal. This speaks to Atwood’s masterful imitation of what she calls “the literature of witness,” also known as testimonial literature (Atwood xviii). This is a genre in which authors are called to write down what is happening to them, because what is happening to them is, in one way or another, completely unbelievable. Someone, someday, in a world better than the one they are living in, must read, and know, and understand what happened to them. Strong stuff, and as Atwood points out in her 2017 introduction, entirely grounded in the hope for a better future - one in which there will be a reader who can read, and know, and understand.

Atwood does an amazing job of imitating this form through Offred, who is living in a totalitarian, neo-Puritanical nightmare known as The Republic of Gilead (formerly, the United States of America). Late in the novel, in one of the most moving passages, Offred directly addresses her reader: “By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are” (Atwood 268). If that doesn’t encapsulate the entire point of writing, dystopian hellscape or no, I don’t know what does, so bravo to Atwood. In this moment, and others like it, the detachment fades away and is replaced by a sense of intense connection. The epilogue, titled “Historical Notes,” paints a rather more disheartening picture of Offred’s actual eventual reader. Atwood creates an audience of intellectuals, listening to a presentation on The Handmaid’s Tale as a historical text within the larger field of “Gileadean Studies.” This not only adds to the “literature of witness” effect, but also introduces an interesting censure of academia, which was an unexpected but fitting inclusion.

Things will now take a political turn. It is, in my somewhat limited experience, impossible to read dystopian fiction without drawing parallels to one’s current political ecosystem, so I hope you won’t mind. Atwood does it herself in the introduction, so I feel like I have pretty good ground to stand on. I have only one thing to mention, and I will attempt (and most likely fail) to be brief.

The main thing that I took away from The Handmaid’s Tale was how easy, and how dangerous, complacency truly is. It plays out on a personal scale in the lives of the characters. Offred, for example, knows that things are not the way they should be but seems unable to break through into real resistance. Not a single thing that happens to her in the entire book is a direct result of her own action. Or we have Moira, who begins the novel as a badass, laughing in the face of tyranny, but ends it wasting away in Gilead’s secret brothel. In this case, even Offred can recognize the tragedy of Moira’s ending: “I’d like to tell a story about how Moira escaped for good this time. Or if I couldn’t tell you that, I’d like to say she blew up Jezebel’s with fifty Commanders inside it. I’d like her to end with something daring and spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her. But as far as I know that didn’t happen” (Atwood 250). No one likes to see someone with so much fire inside simply giving up and giving in.

Now I know, I know, this is complacency on an individual level, which of course, looked at under a microscope cannot be criticized too harshly. After all, if Offred or Moira had traded in complacency for rebellion, they would have ended up like Ofglen - the one true rebel we meet in this book, who we are led to believe meets a gruesome end. Self-preservation is part of human nature, particularly when things are already bad. However, and that’s a BIG however, when too many people value immediate self-preservation over fighting for what is right, you end up with the Republic of Gilead. Here’s how Offred says it happened:

“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.”

“People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.”

“Things continued in a state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful…The thing to do, they said, was to continue as usual” (Atwood 174)

The news, a censored propaganda machine, said to stay home, trust them, and continue as usual, and everybody did! Sound familiar? All of a sudden you needed a special ID pass to gain access to certain areas, and that was okay because it was all in the name of safety and security. Sound familiar? This book was written in 1985, but it could have been written yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an optimist, and I do not believe that we will end up living under a totalitarian government like Gilead. Atwood, Canadian that she is, doesn’t understand the American spirit, love of liberty, and distain for tyranny that I believe still prevails over most of the country.

How could she, when her own native land is headed to hell in a handbasket, with power tripping Justin Trudeau at the helm. You may not be aware because it’s been effectively wiped from the news cycle, what with other current events taking center stage, but the Canadian government just (and I mean JUST 4 days ago) froze over 200 bank accounts belonging to peaceful protestors. Spoiler alert: that’s how they did it in The Handmaid’s Tale. They froze the accounts. I know that the New York Times reports that the freezes have been lifted, which is all well and good if you believe them. Whether or not the reported un-freeze is true, though, is actually besides the point - Trudeau has proven not only that it can be done, but that he believes it is within his power to do it. In 2017, Margaret Atwood wrote an introduction for the edition of this novel that I just read. She ended that introduction with a rumination beginning: “In the wake of the recent American election, fears and anxieties proliferate. Basic civil liberties are seen as endangered…” (Atwood xix). I find it odd that, now, in 2022, after 3 years of endangered civil liberties, Atwood is silent. She seems to have nothing to say about the fears and the anxieties that people all around the world are facing now. Is she paying attention? Is anybody paying attention?