The Handmaid's Tale: Special Edition
Series: The Handmaid's Tale, Book 1
By: Margaret Atwood, Valerie Martin - essay / Narrated By: Claire Danes and full cast, Margaret Atwood
Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
The older I get and make it through this world, the creepier it gets…!
Lemme just start by saying this review is for the Special Edition version. That means that I’ll be touching on the ending that has Atwood and later Martin. -BUT- If all you have or want is the Original version? You are so totally NOT missing out. Sure, it’s ALWAYS interesting when an author sheds a bit of light on something that became that odd “Instant Classic” and that’s certainly the case with the gruffly-voiced Atwood. I did indeed enjoy that, especially as I’ve managed to write a novel in my life and have a tendency of taking the words of the venerable to heart. And Valerie Martin’s essay is good (and miiiiildly thought provoking), so there’s THAT too.
But that’s absolutely all that’s different, even tho’ this Edition has also the “Full Cast” label to it.
Uhm, oh no! This is ONLY Clare Danes, and the Full Cast is only for the Symposium bit at the end. It’s EXACTLY the same as the Original version, so I was verrry disappointed.
But I trundled on because I’m brave like that; besides—I’d already spent a credit on it, and that made me wanna see what was going to happen.
If you’re uninitiated to the work (If you’ve, Pleeeease GOD, avoided the bastardizations on TV and such all! Why ARE books turned into visuals? Yes, I’m one of THOSE people), here’s what’s going on:
We know her only as Offred (Of Fred), a young woman in the new world of Gilead. This is a world (And she’s in the New England area; the walls of Harvard are used for hanging the bodies of the “wicked”) where there are the Wives of the Commanders; there are Marthas; there are Econo-Wives; there are the Handmaids. Handmaids have been shown to have been able to have children (As proven by their lives before kidnap, lives when the U.S. wasn’t Gilead yet). They’ve been kidnapped; they’ve been through indoctrination; they have no choice but to be the possible vessels for the sperm of the Commanders. They are for breeding only.
Women aren’t allowed to read. They’re certainly not allowed to handle money. Their identities are solely based upon their relationships to men. All this after the President was assassinated, the Congress gunned down. Slowly, in the name of Security, the U.S. population gave up rights. As Atwood says, in times of chaos and fear, countries morph back into their beginnings; and for us, that’s the Puritan way.
The characters are good and diverse, and they’re definitely well-fleshed out. And there’s always the tension between who is a Believer and who might actually work on the good side—You can’t trust anybody, but Offred is in dire need of hope. Her days are spent in living in this new world, but her nights are for subversive things like thoughts, feelings, memories of her life before. And later, when the Commander proves himself, proves men (No offense to male Accomplices!) to still be pigs (No offense to pigs!), nights are also filled with other subversive and kinky things like Scrabble and sex clubs.
I’d always thought Clare Danes rocked the narration, but I had to initially rethink this as I listened to it again this time: She seems so incredibly subdued, kinda awkward. But I felt such relief as the story progressed because her voice came to reflect the story. Offred is sooo shut down as she’s lost sooo much from her life before, not knowing if her husband is dead, not knowing where her much-adored daughter has been taken. Her walks in the morning to shop for the household leads her to where the bodies of the executed hang, and there is always the numb fear that she will recognize her husband Luke among the dangling. Danes captures this well, plus she does the group scenes very, very well: The vitriol of the Indoctrination center; the survival attitude at the sex club; the mob mentality at the Partici-cution. Plus, who else would do the sound of a woman exhaling after a drag on a cigarette? A+!
In college, aaaages ago, a dramatic friend who was discussing The Handmaid’s Tale with another student, a guy, went to great lengths to say how it could happen. Being the jackass I sometimes am, I scoffed loudly and obnoxiously at the time. But I gotta say, the more I see women’s health being taken over nowadays, the more I’ve gotta give Atwood (And my rather dramatic friend) a nod. I think we do indeed go back to our roots, and if our history has already shown we have no problem with executing the different (Think the Salem witch trials), what’s to stop us now, as we also have no problem with history repeating itself.
I’m still a jackass at times, and maybe I’m being silly in thinking that this story can be more than speculative fiction, but when you combine growing environmental toxicity (Possibly leading to increasing reproductive sterility) with resentment, with fear of extremism (And the willingness to trade off individual freedoms for a sense of safety)?
The sum answer of it might just be scarier than we can bear…
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