Enjoy the Little Things
Enjoy the Little Things – A review of The Handmaid’s Tale
By Millie Garraway
How often have you found yourself plagued with that crushing feeling only hindsight can bring—that heart-wrenching flash of emotion released from a long-forgotten memory that’s bubbled to the surface, bursting with nostalgia? How easily have you indulged in that nostalgic bliss; purchasing that ice cream or venturing back to the ‘good old times’ without a second thought or no reason to believe you couldn’t? For us, these little things are a given, a right, a simple, understood aspect of the human condition. But for others, it isn’t so much a thought. In Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, crushing blows of emotional havoc are delivered as she forces her characters and her readers through immense tragedy. She drags the reader, helpless and unable to fix the pain among committed atrocities, leaving us haunted by the classic phrase, “You can’t always get what you want…”
… Can’t you?
Claustrophobic and utterly bleak, the realistic, near-future setting of the dystopian novel leaves readers in despair as the weight of history’s potential repetition bears down, heightened by Atwood’s harrowing conviction that the events in this novel had, at some point in history, already happened. The tangible nature of the protagonist, Offred’s, service as a ‘handmaid’ is just one of the many heavy events that unfold and serve as a stark reminder of the forgotten freedom we had. Throughout the journey this novel will take you on, you will quickly realise the ease of your life and count your blessings more than once.
In the novel, totalitarianism, coupled with strict religious devotion, transformed a once stable North America into a mutated and oppressed state known as Gilead. The philosophy of the state ensures the submission of women under the watchful and ‘meaningful’ control of men. Sentenced to a life of service to the state, handmaids are enlisted to host the next generation of Commander children, as childbirth is not within their wife’s role. Despite militant approaches to indoctrination, Offred takes us through glimpses of the past, where a disregard for the little things was apparent and an urgency for us to find joy in the mundane is pushed.
Despite the censorship and repression of citizens in Gilead, Offred finds comfort in her minuscule memories of the past. Her ability to remember what the government desperately tried to eradicate preaches the importance of living in the moment and finding joviality in the monotony. Among the various lessons and warnings preached through A Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of finding pleasure in the little things while you still can cling to the reader as grief holds onto the weary. Atwood reminds all of us outside of Offred’s cloud of chaos to enjoy the little things, for they are often forgotten.
