Book vs. Big Screen and Prophetic Classics: The Handmaid’s Tale
I don’t try to hide my love of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve been watching the show since 2017 and am a mega fan. That being said, I do have a confession. Until this year, I hadn’t read the book.
I know. I know.
It wasn’t ever assigned to me in school and I think, like most, I left school with a distaste for “the classics.” They tend to be stale and dense and wordy and lack some action if I’m being honest.
I’m finding that as I get older, I’m able to appreciate these works as a 30-something adult with four kids and some life experience in a way I couldn’t as a teenager.
Suffice to say I’m committing to going back and revisiting classic sci-fi and or reading great works for the first time. I started with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale which I listened to on audiobook. It’s narrated by Claire Danes (who was wonderful, I wasn’t sure anyone, but Elizabeth Moss could be Offred, and she did great). The audiobook is also free on Audible so that’s a bonus too.
I was floored. Rarely can I enjoy a book after I’ve seen the movie or show, but in this case, it so deeply enriched my enjoyment.
The book and season one are dollar for dollar the same as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t notice any major diversions from the source material that threw off my enjoyment. What I wasn’t expecting was just how close the two were. Given that the book was written in 1984 (weird!), I expected that the show had some modernization that the book wouldn’t. I thought June’s sharp, edgy narration was an update and that the turn from “modern day” to Gillead would look a little different.
Instead I was blown away by the superb voice Atwood bestowed upon Offred over 30 years ago and the uncanny eye she had for the future.
Atwood is always accused of two things: being too dark and being unimaginably accurate. In the wake of the 2016 election, a lot of people were quick to make the comparison to The Handmaid’s Tale. I would argue that in 2021 the full scope of how modern life could become Gillead has never been more clear.
While she has always maintained that The Handmaid’s Tale is rooted entirely in history and that history repeats itself (hence her accuracy), I have to argue that something more was going on with Maragaret Atwood. I think she was accessing something even more profound than humans’ amnesiac tendency to relive their own self-generated horrors.
Three Aspects of The Book That Hit Hard
1. Suspending the Constitution
“It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe, the entire government gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
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.”
This collection of lines is represented in both the show and the book and it floors me every time.
How can we not hear the echoes of our own time in these lines? After two decades of blaming “Islamic extremists” and invading Islamic nations. After watching freedoms vanish under the Patriot Act and lockdowns, while everyone watched Tiger King on Netflix. How can we not see ourselves here? More importantly, how did Atwood see us ending up here 16 years before 9/11. An event that deserves pondering on another day. When the government can monitor you at any moment, journalists are thrown in jail and you’re told you can’t leave your home or operate your busines, what world other than pre-Gillead can we consider this to be?
It was always the sliding scale between the world we know and Gillead that fascinated me about the show and that was amplified in the book.
2. Compubank
In the book, Atwood talks about Compubank and Compucards. She talks about the dissolution of paper money and the transition of everything to an online interface. When you see women not being able to access money and then the full shut down of access to cash from anyone who wasn’t on Gillead’s side, this is the main control mechanism after they’ve obliterated government and taken over.
“I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did it, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.”
Well, we’re already living in this possibility. The number in our bank accounts could be deleted in an instant and all our access to capital disappeared overnight. It’s a scary consideration and I can’t imagine thinking of this nefarious device in 1985, but Margaret Atwood did. It’s a comment on complacency and dependency around corporate and government systems that we don’t talk about enough. We put all our trust, our earnings and our tradable valuable in the hands of the entities we can’t trust. If the wrong people decided they wanted to control us with authoritarian impunity, it wouldn’t be hard. What do we have that’s of value? How much food would we have if we couldn’t go to the store? How would we leave town? We see all of this unfold in The Handmaid’s Tale, but do we prepare for the possibility? Do we really trust those in charge enough not to do this to us?
In 2020 when your local coffee shop had to close, but Starbucks was open, did we see it? When wealth shifted by the billions to the Amazon’s and Target’s away from our neighbor’s closed small business, did we protest? When they told us we couldn’t use cash in the fast food line, did we simply pull out our compucards instead?
3. Hindsight is 20/20, Be Present
The lines above make every conspiratorial, anti-establishment hair on my body stand on end. But this is the line that got me:
“How were we to know we were happy?”
This reminder came in the midst of Offred reflecting on her life with Luke and her daughter. The little troubles and day-to-day worries that plagued them seemed like joys in Gillead. Moments she’d give anything to get back. Fights she wished she was having in place of the gutted emptiness and longing she feels.
While I spend a lot of time worrying about what’s headed our way and fretting over the remarkable and horrifying events that are turning our lives into a sci-fi reality, we have to remind ourselves that the joy of having the people we love and our children and our spouses and our homes and food on the table and an excessive overabundance is never to be taken for granted. That the human spirit is a fickle beast that longs for better while missing the best.
I think 2020 shook everyone in different ways, but while we sat in fear and horror of all the ways The Handmaid’s Tale was manifesting, I think we also had some chances to slow down and appreciate things we were missing before. This quote came as a reminder to look up from the fear porn on my phone and play a board game. To treasure home cooked meals and give corporate restaurants the middle finger.
In the end, the factors that contributed to Gillead are either here in our world today or on the horizon. Fertility continues to decline, bodily autonomy seems to disappear a little every day, and authoritarianism, fascism and totalitarianism seems to just be the cost of doing business these days. Atwood’s updated Afterword in the audiobook is the stuff of nightmares, if you care to get darker. But it begs some questions. Do we see it? Are we being lulled into complacency? Would we let Gillead happen? Do we feel the slow boil accelerating?
It’s hard to have hope. It’s hard to look at this fictional society and see so much of ourselves reflected in it. But can we also learn too? Can we actually prevent this by turning off the TV, log off of social media, acknowledging the warning signs, acting and embracing the things that are joyous and good and on the side of humanity? I have to hope so. But my hope lies in people, not in politics. People have to see how close we are. And every time we’re faced with handing over a piece of ourselves in the name of self preservation and alleged protection, we have to say no. Fear is a weapon. Don’t let them wield it against you.