Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Comment: 'Handmaid's Tale' characterized unfairly by its opponents [San Antonio]
San Antonio Express-News ^ | 12 April 2006 | Margaret Atwood

Posted on 04/12/2006 11:44:39 AM PDT by Racehorse

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 121-130 next last
To: Racehorse
Nowhere in the book is the regime identified as Christian. It puts into literal practice some passages from the Bible, but these passages are not from the New Testament. In fact, the regime is busily exterminating nuns, Baptists, Quakers and so forth in the same way the Bolsheviks exterminated the Mensheviks.

I missed this on the first read. So she's saying that her novel is really about The JEWS??

41 posted on 04/12/2006 1:09:30 PM PDT by Alouette (Psalms of the Day: 72-76)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse

The book is an exercise in feminist paranoia, alleging a right-wing Christian takeover in "the near future." (It was, I believe, written during the Reagan years.) None of its predictions have even remotely come to pass. It is a silly, asinine book that should be rejected on those grounds, not some alleged prurience.


42 posted on 04/12/2006 1:09:33 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse

One other thing: Atwood is simply lying if she is trying to claim that she was not talking about a right-wing Christian dictatorship. That's how virtually all of her readers understood it; I know, because I have read many of their revues on amazon.com..


43 posted on 04/12/2006 1:12:42 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Froufrou

I read the "handmaiden's tale" in college. I thought it was entertaining for being so unbelievable. The idea that Jerry Falwell types taking over the US is far less likely than watermelon atheists. OR, in more recent times, Islamofacists. Even in my liberal youth, I couldn't imagine a civil war with Baptists bothering to blow up Quakers and Amish. If anything, they'd tell the Amish to do more breeding and ignore the Quakers.
Methods to drive up the birth rate would best be done by massive tax credits for parents, not raping fertile women. The stress of confinement would decrease her fertility, not increase it. And passing women from man to man until she got pregnant would increase the risk that the infected men would give the precious fertile ones a disease.
If anything, the world it paints already exists behind the burqa. The violation of womens' rights is here and now, but it's behind the Veil, not the Bible belt.


44 posted on 04/12/2006 1:12:47 PM PDT by HumanitysEdge (http://calc.homeip.net/humanedge.html)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: Moose4
You ever read this one? Sounds like one of those bad Tepper or Kingsolver screeds.

Yep. (Read it while visiting my father on summer vacation, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance THERE.) And it's worse than either of those...Kingsolver's got excellent characterization, and Tepper can do plot and metaphor. All Atwood did was plod. :-)

45 posted on 04/12/2006 1:14:01 PM PDT by Foxfire4
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: HumanitysEdge

"The violation of womens' rights is here and now, but it's behind the Veil, not the Bible belt."

Got that right. What ever happened to the people who were speaking out about the horrid mutilation of young girls and boys in Africa? Sick stuff.


46 posted on 04/12/2006 1:14:37 PM PDT by Froufrou
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: JmyBryan

Excellent book. And actually that brings up a good point. "The Stand" would be a great AP English book - there is so much there to analyze and discuss.


47 posted on 04/12/2006 1:14:45 PM PDT by Kaylee Frye
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse
The Handmaid's Tale wasn't on the AP list when I was in high school not too long ago -- if they want to read medium? grade futuristic fiction there's lots of it out there, and a bunch of stuff better than Atwood.
48 posted on 04/12/2006 1:16:21 PM PDT by JohnnyZ (Happy New Year! Breed like dogs!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse
Here. Now you can save some time without having to plod through the book. Having read "The Handmaid's Tale", I can tell you it's pretty accurate. Except for the "pretty good speculative fiction" part.
49 posted on 04/12/2006 1:22:32 PM PDT by Foxfire4
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse
"I would also like the comment on the objections to the book that have been made. The remark "offensive to Christians" amazes me — why are some Christians so quick to see themselves in this mirror?"

Notice how even while claiming she was not talking about Christians, she accuses Christians of being like the people in the book?
50 posted on 04/12/2006 1:23:02 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse

I will forgive authors a lot if their books are good. I don't demand that their views match or even respect mine. All I ask is that if they have to preach, they do it subtly; and if they write something that's supposed to be science fiction, that it makes sense. Margaret Atwood can't do either, so I no longer try to read her stuff.

This book somehow reminded me of Lois Lowry's "The Giver", another psuedo-science-fiction 'dystopia' that made no logical sense when you spent any actual time thinking about the society. That book is also often controversial in schools because parents don't want their kids reading it for various reasons.


51 posted on 04/12/2006 1:24:13 PM PDT by JenB
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaylee Frye

I agree about "The Stand." Problem is, Stephen King is considered by 'scholars' to be a hack.


52 posted on 04/12/2006 1:25:03 PM PDT by Froufrou
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: Froufrou
Yeah well, we all know what the 'scholars' are like. They support works like Atwoods as genius.
53 posted on 04/12/2006 1:29:36 PM PDT by Kaylee Frye
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: Froufrou

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I proposed it.

King has had as much influence on our culture as any fiction author, far more than Atwood. Atwood gets attention because she wrote a horror story that fit the conceptions of an academic minority whereas King encompasses all social strata.


54 posted on 04/12/2006 1:30:38 PM PDT by JmyBryan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: Polyxene
What ever happened to teaching the classics, i.e., Shakespeare, Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Hardy, Eliot??

My first thought as well. After this list ise covered, and about 10,000 other authors, then there might be room for this dreck.
55 posted on 04/12/2006 1:34:53 PM PDT by GodBlessRonaldReagan (Count Petofi will not be denied!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy
I read this book many years ago. I considered it staggering in it's stupidity. Also, it's polical agenda is not subtle. Men suck.

You mean like most sitcoms and commercials? These shows and commercials that make adult males look like total morons are getting out of hand.Makes me long for the days of "Father Knows Best".

Nowdays - it's more like "Father Doesn't Know Diddly-Squat".

56 posted on 04/12/2006 1:35:30 PM PDT by Tokra (I think I'll retire to Bedlam.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: JenB

Let's get REAL S.F. into the school curricula. I vote for Poul Andersen's "The High Crusade," and "Space Cadet," "Citizen of the Galaxy," and "Farmer in the Sky" for Heinlein.


57 posted on 04/12/2006 1:44:53 PM PDT by GAB-1955 (being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Kingdom of Heaven....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: GAB-1955

See... the best thing about homeschooling was that I got to count reading Heinlein and other greats as part of my schooling.

And my future kids will get a full course in SF, of course, so they can tell the good from the Atwood.


58 posted on 04/12/2006 1:51:14 PM PDT by JenB
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: Alouette
Of course sensitive Margaret would never write anything so intolerant about Islam.

I think you may be selling Atwood short on that score, whatever else she is Atwood's not a hypocrite on such matters. Atwood has frequently disparaged Islamic beliefs as regards the role of women, and for example was very active in the "No Religious Arbitration Coalition", a group formed to fight the proposal in Ontario to allow the use of Islamic law to settle family disputes (in the end the anti-Sharia forces were successful).

So whatever one thinks of her politics, it appears to me that she's usually acting from a consistent set of principles whether the conclusions to which they lead her are "PC" or not.

59 posted on 04/12/2006 1:53:18 PM PDT by M. Dodge Thomas (More of the same, only with more zeros at the end.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Racehorse
It's encouraging to know the written word is still taken so seriously.

That thought aside, I would like to congratulate the students, parents and teachers who have supported the use of my book in Advanced Placement courses. They have aligned themselves against the censors, book-banners and book-burners throughout the ages and have stood up for open discussion and a free expression of opinion — which, last time I looked, was still the American way, though that way is under pressure.

Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, and the koran are all examples of the written word taken seriously by some extremly dangerous elements in society. There are those of us who urge caution the presentation of such works (they are not positive examples for living).

And it is good of her to thank those who have made her richer by requiring the reading of her book.

60 posted on 04/12/2006 1:55:41 PM PDT by weegee ("CBS NEWS? Is that show still on?" - freedomson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 121-130 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson