I love a good dystopia. 1984 painted a vivid picture of a surveillance state, but also showed us people controlled with a common enemy and fake news. Neuromancer and Snow Crash mixed the computer revolution with the 1980’s “Greed is Good.”
I recently finished reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood and I’m surprised it took me this long to find it. I picked it up when it went on sale shortly after the election (I can imagine the thinking behind that pricing decision). Wikipedia summarizes the plot:
The story is told in the first person by a woman called Offred (literally Of-Fred). The character is one of a class of women kept for reproductive purposes and known as “handmaids” by the ruling class in an era of declining births due to sterility from pollution and sexually transmitted diseases. Offred describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred to as “The Commander”). Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Offred describes the structure of Gilead’s society, including the several different classes of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy.
There were some things that stuck with me. Women being reduced from people to simple hosts for unborn children. As Offred recalled a time when she had rights, like the right to work or own property, I kept remembering a picture I saw online:
That’s a group of women at a university in Iran, pre-revolution. I imagine many of these women are still alive. I wonder if they knew how quickly things could change? Do they feel more free in an Islamic state than they did in a Western one? Do they envy our freedom or pity it?
“Freedom.” That’s always been a word that caught my eye. When it shows up, it’s usually lacking specifics and trying to appeal to emotions. I think about this quote from the book a lot:
There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.
I guess that’s the idea. In America, authoritarianism would have to come wrapped in the word “freedom.” Readers of history can probably point to examples where that’s exactly what happened.
The book is beautifully written and I highly recommend it as a story, a message, and a work of literature. I also just found out that Hulu is adapting it into a show with Elizabeth Moss, if you aren’t the reading type.