How Is The Handmaid's Tale Relevant Today

When The Handmaid’s Tale was written in the 1980s, there were many issues, such as women’s rights, climate change and social control, that were happening that caused Margaret Atwood to write this book and all these issues are still very much relevant in today’s world. In the Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood brings to light the effects of limiting women’s rights and the use of a strict social class order has on a society suing a first-hand story of a woman being thrown into an authoritative theocracy in the United States. Throughout the book Offred’s story bounces back and forth between her current life and her life before the revolution, giving the story dimension and Offred’s interpretation and contrast of how her life has changed so much in so little
There are six different categories, that women in Gilead are a part of, there are the commander’s wives, handmaids, Econowives (those not good enough to become handmaids or commander’s wives), Aunts (collaborators who run torture lectures and spokespersons for the church state of Gilead (Malak)), Marthas (servants/slaves) and the unwomen or undesirables (feminists, elderly women and others who do not fit into any of the other categories or who do not conform to Gilead’s rules). The state of Gilead “… reduces the handmaids to the slavery status of being mere “breeders”” (Malak). In an article, Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and the Dystopian Traditions by Amin Malak, Malak writes that, “… when human beings are not free to aspire toward whatever they wish… life turns into a painfully prolonged prison term”. Malak continues to explain how everyone in Gilead is ruled by only the church-state, even the Commanders are forced to have sex with the handmaids and it is considered to be “duty”. In another article, A Discussion of The Handmaid’s Tale by Wendy Perkins, she states that the leaders of Gilead make up the, “…roles for subordinates, the women, who are said to be unable to perform more valued functions like reasoning and governing skills” and as a, “result subordinates find it difficult to believe in their own ability” (Perkins).
For the duration of Offred’s time in Gilead, as she was making these recordings, she slowly figures out what is happening around her and often comparing it to her past life. Offred continuously is figuring out how to live her daily life, walking on eggshells, having to suppress what she knew before-hand and life a new life entirely. Atwood attaches major significance to Offred’s flashbacks to her past life, “… those shifting reminiscences offer glimpses of a life… not ideal… filled with energy, creativity, humaneness, and a sense of selfhood, a life that sharply contrasts with the alienation, slavery, and suffering under totalitarianism” (Malak), which gives readers some comfort since regardless what Offred is being put through and has been put through she still knows what life was like before Gilead. In the article, Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and the Dystopian Traditions, Malak writes that the novel’s central meaning is that, “misogynous dogmas, no matter how seemingly innocuous and trustworthy they may appear at their initial conception, are bound, when allowed to access to power, to reveal their ruthlessly tyrannical nature” (Malak). These articles cited above were written before the television show was even a thought and before The Handmaid’s Tale was extremely relevant to what