The End Or a New Beginning

The end of A Handmaid's Tale struck me as very ambiguous as I'm sure it was meant to be. So many questions remained to be answered mainly surrounding Nick, the Eyes and the resistance movement. On one hand, there is the pessimistic ways which strikes me as 1984-esque. Nick could have been a spy all along and the Eyes could be a propaganda/spy agency as they seem to be who wish to either kill or reeducate Offred. This would then mean that either the resistance groups don’t even exist or their impact is negligible when compared to the absolute power of the government of Gilead. On the other hand, Nick could really be part of the resistance, the Eyes either could be infiltrated or actually be working against the government which seems farfetched but still possible and that the resistance is a thriving struggle against the oppressive government. Obviously, I hope for the latter since Gilead can’t possibly be any closer to a utopia than the world that was sacrificed for its creation and so any chink in it’s armor would be an improvement. For now, I’ll be crossing my fingers

Letting Their True Colors Shine

So, near the end of the story, a salvaging is described in detail when Offred and everyone else are forced to go to one. To be honest, most of it was not as surprising as I thought it would be. Naturally, people had to be executed somehow in order to get onto the wall and the salvaging initially seemed like a normal way to accomplish this. However, this all changed when the alleged rapist was executed. I found it shocking that all of the handmaids charged out to tear the prisoner apart with no mercy. Ofglen seemed to be the only sane person besides Offred during the ordeal since she knocked the poor guy out immediately although we find out later that she most likely committed suicide to prevent capture. Anyhow, just the idea of these normally civil and complacent women tearing a person limb from limb show that some things about human nature can’t be erased from the subconscious completely. On a side note, no wonder they wear red.

Beneath the Surface

The most recent chapters have contained "the club" that many of the commanders and other men often frequent. The commander explains its existence by saying that you can't get rid of nature and that men always want multiple women and instead of women dressing differently as they had before, since women always wear the same thing, the men look for other women for sex besides their wives.
This strikes me as something that is wrong with puritanical or conservative society, there is no way that you can truly suppress human nature no matter how structured your religion and laws are and you can never stop people from doing what they want to to an extent. this club is a shining example that even if it may be illegal to have prostitution or adultery for that matter, you simply can't prevent people from doing it altogether short of castration or something just as drastic.
This also extends to drugs and other excises and basically, you may be able to take a horse away from water, but you can't stop it from running all the way back and drink while you aren't looking

Discontent

It feels odd to me upon reading up to chapter 31 that no one in this entire society seems to like what's going on. I suppose it probably has to do with the fact that everyone lived during the time before the revolution. As for the revolution it reminds me of a Benjamin Franklin quote I once heard.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."'

Anyhow that's pretty much how it happened, after the whole government being massacred, the society gave up the constitution, and it all turned sour from there. Anyhow back to the whole simmering discontent, in the chapters we learn that not only Offred but also Ofglen don't like the whole unable to talk on their walks thing. In addition, the commander has to secretly harbor Offred so that they can play Scrabble, and even Serena is irked since Offred hasn't gotten pregnant. It seems like this society can't possibly work as it is now and therefore can't last long. Perhaps a re-revolution is in order?

Scrabble Anyone?

So, in the book we've been reading there has been a lot of mentioning of language and words and this motif has also been brought up in the handouts we've been getting. Insofar, I'm pretty sure that since language and reading is forbidden for women to learn in the current society, Offred uses it in order to connect with the past when she could read and use language without any punishment as well as live equally with men. Originally, I thought it was just herself who thought this but now I have noticed that I wouldn't really know if she was the only one who longed for the past but it isn't as if any of the other characters are able to speak their mind freely anyhow. The Commander in the chapter 23 kind of proved this point, I'm pretty sure that he played Scrabble because by playing it, Offred proves that she knows how to read and use language and seeing that it is now forbidden, the Commander probably finds it rather nostalgic. Although this still does not make the asking her to kiss him any less creepy, just somewhat understandable.

Uh, so what happened exactly....

So upon reading the beginning of The Handmaid's Tale, I found the switches between the present and the past of the narrator's life to be at first confusing since they were not clear cues that separated them but once I got used to them, I found them confusing in a completely different way. I started to think about how the society possibly could’ve changed as drastically as it had in such a short time. The degree that it had changed in itself is astounding considering it evolved from a modern US society to well, that at least within a couple of decades since the narrator was at least in here late teens while in the old society and now couldn’t be much over 30 at the oldest given her current descriptions. I guess that is the deal with most sci fi books though, they seem to ask what would happen if (insert extremely odd happenstance here) happened. I guess I'll have to wait to find out what happened

Can't Live With'em, Can't Live Without'em

So yesterday, I read "When it Changed" by Joanna Russ and I found some of the views taken by the characters to be a little extreme. For the most part, I found that the characters who lived on Whileaway were very closed to the idea of men coming back. Upon first reading it, I thought that the male envoy person was condescending toward the women but after reflecting I found that he really wasn't as abrasive as I assumed he was. Although he suggests that Whileaway would do better with men, he does concede that men have their shortcomings in one paragraph. However, Katy and even the main character don't even give mankind (quite literally in this case) a chance. They really don't have any legitimate reasons to feel threatened by the men and yet they do. Katy nearly blows the envoy's head off merely because of an idea cooked up in her imagination that men would destroy their world when it simply is not so, or at least not to the degree that they would think it would. All in all, I end up sympathizing more with the male characters not necessarily because well, I am one but rather that the women in the story are just so closed off to the outside world.