We use cookies to make your experience better. To comply with the new e-Privacy directive, we need to ask for your consent to set the cookies. Learn more.
Handmaid's Tale
In a future world where a totalitarian dictatorship is in place and the dictators have strong, cult-like religious beliefs, chemical warfare causes a lack of reproduction in society. The lack of population leads to extreme measures, gathering the single, divorced, widowed, and unlawfully married (according to the Bible) women to be placed in a home where they are to give the man of the house a child. The married commanders get to keep their families and homes, while the women are often taken from their husbands, children, and family. The men see it as a duty, and the women as a sentence. The dictators use the verses about bearing children to force these women to do these tasks.
When Offred, a once married handmaid, gets sent to live with a new commander after failing to bear a child at her last home, she is conflicted with her thoughts, actions, and feelings; wishing she could be with her husband and child again, but knowing it will never happen. This novel shows life and experiences through her eyes during her time at this new home she's been placed in. The author has written this book with the mindset of this situation being a similar or possible outcome of our country's declining freedom's. Note: this book contains several graphic scenes, suggestions, and references regarding intercourse as well as strong language. 311 pgs, pb.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now".
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing,The Handmaid's Taleis at once scathing satire, dire warning, and literary tour de force.
Product Format: | Paperback |
---|---|
Brand: | Anchor Books |
Author: | Margaret Atwood |
Grade: | AD |
ISBN: | 9780385490818 |
Length in Inches: | 8 |
Width in Inches: | 5.125 |
Height in Inches: | 0.75 |
Weight in Pounds: | 0.55 |