Resumo de The Handmaid?s Tale

Written in 1985, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale presents a
vision of the near future in the Republic of Gilead, formed within the
boundaries of the United States after muslim extremists reportedly
destroyed both the Executive and Legislative branches of the US
government. In this ultra-religious futuristic society,
different religious groups fight seemingly never-ending holy wars
against each other, society as a whole takes on an overly moral tone as
right-wing conservatives rule the new goverment, and women lose the
ability to work or handle money and are assigned to certain classes
(much like a caste system): the women incapable of bearing children
become Wives; women assigned to handle domestic chores are Marthas; and
women capable of reproduction are given the title of Handmaid.
Each title bears different responsibilities and the women of each class
wear distinguishing garb to note their positions in society (the Wives
wear blue, the Marthas wear brown, and the Handmaids wear red).
The story is presented as a kind of history of the society of Gilead
told, through a series of cassette tapes found in an abandoned house
that was part of an Underground Femaleroad designed to smuggle women
north to Canada, by a Handmaid named Offred (read Of fred meaning the
Handmaid belongs to a Commander named Fred). As a handmaid,
Offred's sole purpose in society is to bear children for Commanders and
their infertile Wives. She is forced to take part in a ceremony
in which she engages in sexual congress with the Commander while the
Commander's wife physically restrains her in an attempt to impregnate
her. During the course of her stay with the Commander and his
wife, she finds out that life in this ultra-religious society is not
quite what it seems. The conservatives of the government
engage in a very extreme form of censorship, removing anything of a
potentially lascivious nature from the general public. Through a
series of forbidden interactions with her Commander (during which
time the two engage in games of Scrabble), Offred discovers that for
all its moralistic tone, the new society has many of the trappings of
the old one. The commanders are allowed to keep items that are
forbidden material, things such as magazines and face cream. In
fact, her Commander even takes her to a brothel (which exists in an
abandoned hotel) where he shows off his prized Handmaid. As
the story progresses, the Commander's wife, fearing that her husband is
infertile, becomes convinced that the only way Offred will become
pregnant (and thus give the Wife the baby she so desperately wants) is
if Offred engages in sexual congress with another man, the Commander's
chaffeur, Nick. Offred begins an illicit affair with Nick in an
attempt to become pregnant and ultimately is arrested (or is it
liberated???) by the society's secret police, a group of men known as
Guardian Angels.

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