“Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually warming bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
This wise remark Margaret Atwood made in her 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale, was all too true after the 2016 US election, when women (in 2017) took to the streets to protest the administration of President Donald Trump, leaving many feeling like they were living in the dystopian world of Atwood, Gilead. .
Handmade signs reading “Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again” popped up overnight, and The Handmaid’s Tale made a comeback in conversations, editorials and public consciousness as the realization dawned on all of us that the world we live in today , has many uneasy similarities to the totalitarian regime that took over America in Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale.
The author not only participated in these conversations, but also went a step further. Atwood recently announced a sequel to the acclaimed book, which will be released 34 years after The Handmaid’s Tale, on September 10, 2019, just in time for the 2020 US election.
Introducing the sequel to her devoted fans, the author wrote on her website:
“I am writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale for release on September 10, 2019. The Testaments is set 15 years after Offred’s last scene in The Handmaid’s Tale, and is told by three female characters.
Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other source of inspiration is the world we have lived in.”
While her fans have all been raving about this announcement, some have also expressed fear by asking the author on social media if the upcoming book will follow the plot of Hulu’s miniseries, which was initially based on The Handmaid’s Tale, but is now moving forward on it. went. However, Atwood has reassured everyone by saying, “Fear not. It’s a surprise.” and on her website she has clearly stated that it is unrelated to the TV series and its sequel.
One of the most exciting things to look forward to, so far the wills What is concerned is the fact that we will finally know what happened to Offred. If you have read the book, you will remember that Offred, which is not the main character’s real name, is a maidservant. Her primary function in Gilead is to procreate. She is believed to give birth to children for the higher echelons of society, which is done through a conception ceremony.
But she finds herself getting involved with a driver named Nick, which is strictly forbidden, and if discovered, could cost her life. Nick also serves the same family as her. Offred believes Nick is part of a resistance movement against the oppressive regime. Offred’s story ends in the penultimate chapter of the book, when Nick and Offred’s relationship is discovered and she is taken by Nick to a van that can take her to the colonies, where she will be forced to collect radioactive waste. clearing. until she dies, or it’s Nick’s way of getting her out of Gilead, which he says he does. We never really find out if she escaped the place or not, because from Offred’s perspective, the story ends here. But hopefully we will now get our answers in the future.
What can also be expected from the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale is a microscopic look at the current world we live in so that we “note” that dystopia isn’t just in Atwood’s novel, we experience it more often than we’d like to accept. We actively ignore it, and as Atwood put it in The Handmaid’s Tale,
“Ignoring is not the same as ignorance, you have to work on it.”