Margret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

One Words Summary: Aiden Quinn
Storyline: In response to an apathetic population, unable to reproduce itself, a militant patriarchal group overthrows the U.S. government and establishes a theocracy which reduces everyone to a function. Suddenly women cannot own property, cannot work outside the home. Reading is against the law. Other minorities are silently removed. All infractions are punishable by death.

More Words: Now I feel guilty for enjoying my life as a stay at home wife and mother who bakes and is completely dependent on her man for food-shelter-clothing-affection. Gosh I don't even drive these days! However the real difference between my life and The Handmaid's Tale is choice. Still I can't help but wonder if I've been duped by The Man (or the troubadours).


Questions:

1. Why is Moira's lassitude so terrible?
2. The women in Gilead are segregated from the men, and they are isolated from other women by class, function, and suspicion. They seem to lack any form of companionship (even words). Which is more important romantic love or friendship?
3. What is the ancillary function of a Handmaid? Are the Commander's sterile?
4. Atwood uses pornography to manifest the level of 'social degradation', how is her barometric choice relevant to our society?
   The military coup is chilling especially in light of 9/11. Could something similar really happen?
5. THMT was published in 1985. When was America really becoming frightened by the AIDS epidemic?
6. Mme Defarge knit, Snow Flower had a fan, how would a woman in Gilead have 'written'?

Quotes:

I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy.
She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for
her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I
didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to
fight about that . I am not your justification for existence, I said to her
once. (p122)

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. (p 174)

No mother is ever completely a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. (p181)

I've tried to put some good things in as well. Flower's for instance, because where would we be without them. (p?)