Handmaid's Tale Comparisons Reflect Reality of Modern Politics

Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale in 1984, a near-decade before the Gulf War and during the burgeoning of the worst Wall Street behavior: "Greed is Good" power brokers leveraging operational companies out of business over time, creating a vacuum of wealth that transferred more financial and political power up the proverbial ladder of success and away from those yet at the bottom rung.

That Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale series has experienced widespread popular success in the third millennium and prompted many to comment on its eerie, gut wrenching significance prompts recognition of the unfortunate timing of a toppled U.S. economy (along with it's prior successful, hope-inducing middle class) and how this relates to adversarial politics today and major events described above.

Although the hideous circumstances of modern American politics and the merciless world of The Handmaid's Tale aren't directly associated, it's impossible to deny the ubiquitous instinctual associations conjured which result in a kind of public awareness—a disquiet that begs political response. 

Background of Desperation in Handmaid's Tale

Set in New England in a near future, The Handmaid's Tale introduces a setting of post-reconstruction rule by enforced sectarian divine law. Atwood presents a view of a bygone society that lost sight of its paragons of individualism and equality among people. Common ideals of independence, social progress, and justice are long faded. 

That this fictional society happens to be patriarchal is of some significance, considering its complete lack of women's rights or choice (voting, reproductive freedom, choice in partnering, etc.) after a continuous regression of gender-equalizing measures to an utterly defeated state in which women are subject to the social views of others. Alongside these issues, a strict caste system has developed, complete with uniform classification for the female into four distinct, official grades.

The main substance for correlation between Atwood's fictional story and modern politics lies heavily in recent campaigns aimed particularly away from women's interests, with detrimental results.

Writing for Forbes, Shivaune Field presents us with some background as to Atwood's experiences during the time Handmaid's Tale was written over thirty years ago, and the two observe apt comparisons between the contrasting scenes of Cold War Berlin (where Atwood resided while drafting her novel) during the 1980s, the United States at that time, and the U.S. today. 

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale reflects a particular type of dystopian society through fiction, while using actual aspects of established social behavior and politics. In mind of real and potential consequences of power struggles in U.S. politics, Atwood tentatively correlates the malevolence of The Handmaid's Tale with the dim reality of modern party politics and social expectation. 

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