Comment: 'Handmaid's Tale' characterized unfairly by its opponents [San Antonio]

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 12 April 2006 | Margaret Atwood

[Steve_Seattle]

"I've met Margaret Atwood (a very charming and unassmuing woman) and she admitted in a lecture that the society depicted in her novel most resembles the Taliban not the Christian Right."

I'll stand by my claim that she intended it as a portrayal of the Christian right. That is clearly how most reviewers understood it, and most of her readers. The Taliban didn't even exist when she wrote the book in the 1980s, nor was Islamic extremism much in the public'c consciousness. In making the admission that you talk about, she is probably just trying to cover herself for making such an idiotic prediction, which never came to pass.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Atwood doesn't want her book pigeonholed as a simple minded political screed."

But that's what it was.

[Steve_Seattle]

"And yet, Atwood herself did say repeatedly it was a slam on the Christian Right back when it came out, so I think maybe some revisionism is in the air, trying to make the book more relevent to the current situation."

Yes, the book was an embarrassment as a predictor of the rise of a Christian dictatorship, so now she's trying to recast it as a prescient warning against Islamic extremism.

[Borges]

I respectfully disagree. There were elements of the book that were critical of various academic theories like New Historicism and even Multiculturalism. The movie left out the ending of the novel which was inspired.

[Steve_Seattle]

" . . .assuming that the movie accurately reflected the ideas of the book, then it could hardly be called "anti-Christian". One aspect of the movie I remember is that the military units fighting the regime were identified by their church affiliation. (Unit names along the lines of "25th Methodist infantry" or "3rd Baptist artillery".)"

Baptists and Methodists both have strong traditions supporting separation of church and state, so would likely oppose a Christian-type dictatorship, particularly if the dictatorship's theological views differed from their own. But the dictatorship envisioned by Atwood was nonethless Christian of a certain evangelical type, even if it might have been opposed by other Christian groups.

[Dumb_Ox]

People (kids included) want to read books about their own world. Or the books that concern themselves with modern ideas. You cannot always live in the past.

Students are, by definition, unable to evaluate the proper course of their own education. Reading things from the past might actually (gasp!) expand their horizons far more than Atwood's ephemeral little book.

How many of these kids have memorized a single poem?

[A Longer Name]

If you make kids read only the books written before 1930 they are going to think that Literature is only some stories about dead guys in top hats. Nothing that has anything to do with them. You gotta have modern books.

This is not to say that Handmaid's Tale has to be included in the program. There are other, much better modern books.

[Dumb_Ox]

If you make kids read only the books written before 1930 they are going to think that Literature is only some stories about dead guys in top hats. Nothing that has anything to do with them. You gotta have modern books.

Just teach them Latin and whip the miscreants.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

If it should be banned, it should be banned because of its anti-male agenda, simply for the fact that were the sexes reversed in this story, Atwood would be one of the first demanding that it be banned.

[reg45]

If they are going to assign science fiction in advanced placement courses, start with Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.