Atwood settle the action in a totalitarian, theocratic state which lies at the present United States, and ironically named Gilead - from the biblical land known for its soothing balm. The regime of Gilead, posiłkując draconian legislation and the extensive apparatus of repression, brought women to the role reproduktorek, the title "pop" in an attempt to solve the problem of low birth. Closed them in special camps, deprived of their names, numbers were tattooed on the forearms. They were not allowed to read or write. Counted in so far as they can have a baby. The body could not arouse desire, and sex - to bring pleasure. The conception was an act entirely mechanical, otherwise, moreover, could not have been, since according to the current doctrine of the appealing interpretation of biblical texts the woman was only a vessel for the male sperm.
futuristic novel, Atwood has a specific historical roots. Was created under President Ronald Reagan, when the American right wing tried to stop the process of emancipation of women. His strength began to show representatives of the "moral majority", the opponents of the constitutional amendment on gender equality and activists from the trade antyaborcyjni pro-life, including the instigators of terrorist acts against abortion clinics. At the same time the world learned about the ban on all forms of birth control and forced pregnancy tests made by the Romanian dictator Ceausescu and the incapacitation of women in the newly established Iranian theocracy. "The Handmaid's Tale," grew out of concerns that this crazy marriage of the totalitarian ideology of religious fundamentalism, which, in America, alluded directly to the Puritan heritage, may shape the future communities.
Atwood has used a well-known to the wretched of the twentieth century genre called antyutopią. The creators of this type of literature, from Huxley to Orwell warned against utopian ideologies that proclaim your password transform the world and human happiness for the price - supposedly temporary - the suspension of his rights. Original sin of utopian thinking was that human nature in all its complexity through indefinable and marked by contradictions, you can - thanks to science or revelation - reduced to one formula. For those who in this formula does not fit, there was no place in the utopian paradise. So if the essence of femininity was the issue of offspring, women unable to procreate considered "niekobiety" and were sent to penal colonies. The man, whose sense of existence is reduced to one function, turns into a machine who does not feel right or anything, or think about anything. It has only been fully operational.
But Atwood book, cruel and frightening, is not fictionalized journalism - it's well written story of the inseparable link between identity and corporeality, feelings of hunger and the need for intimacy. Atwood weaves high Class lyricism of futurology, a predatory political satire with a sophisticated psychological study.
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