A review by Amogh Joshi of The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is considered to be one of the greatest dystopian

novels of all time, exploring a society in which a misogynistic and authoritarian collective

called the Gilead has taken over society and forces the remaining fertile women to become

“Handmaids”, forced to provide the elite of society with children. After a thorough read of

the novel, it’s pretty clear why the novel has earned this title, from its unique point of view

through the eyes of a young Handmaid, to its continuously mysterious and suspenseful plot

and bleak yet thorough character development.

The novel is told from a first-person perspective through the eyes of a new Handmaid,

Offred, who ends up under the wing of a new Commander, a member of the male ruling

class. Offred’s point of view is the first highlight of the novel, as though it starts off as

somewhat confusing, it soon becomes exceptionally interesting how she makes

connections between her past and the present, drawing upon flashbacks from her

memories and winding it all together with a storyline that continues to be explained in

greater detail over time. It appears almost as if Offred is living simultaneously in her past

whilst traversing through the present, and therefore it’s all the more satisfying as the loose

ends begin to get tied up and we start to learn the full story about her and the society as a

whole.

On the topic of society, one thing I particularly enjoyed about the novel was the amount of

information dropped about the past society, specifically the United States of America, and

its connection to the modern dictatorship, Gilead. It’s not often that dystopian novels

approach their past with an open perspective, as they instead choose to either leave an aura

of mystery or try and focus on the future, but I thought that by providing a depthful insight

on the circumstances of Gilead’s past, it really made the novel just a touch more real.

One of the best points of the novel, drawing from some of the points mentioned above, was

its overall mood and aura, which truly seemed to fit its break premise, even down to the little

details like small eye and hand movements and the characters’ thoughts about them. This

is in turn tied to the suspense of the novel, and the fact that while it is a dystopian novel,

there is also a nonlinear storyline and almost a sense of mystery, and there’s always

something new to draw the reader in at every chapter. While the language in the novel is a

bit more sophisticated than your average dystopian thriller, and its format is in turn a bit

different, it’s absolutely a worthwhile read and deserves to receive the gold rating of a

10/10.