Classics Without All the Class discussion

Please keep comments to these chapters. Warning: There will be spoilers.

i don't know what I expected, but the ending definitely left a person hanging. Not one of my favorite books.

The ending left me with a lot of questions. The historical notes made me think that the future people didn't know enough about the society to really make accurate assumptions about what happened. A lot of the questions I had as I was reading weren't answered, which was disappointing but I guess I have to come up with my own answers. I wasn't dissatisfied with the story as I was reading it, but I didn't come away with an overall moral other than a sense that the author was trying to get me to hate men.

You thought Atwood was trying to get you to hate men?

Well, she certainly failed with me. Yes, I hate the patriarchal society of Gilead, but not all the men in the book are hateful, and I saw it more as a warning of particular beliefs, behaviours and practises, rather than outright condemnation of 50% of the population.

Or maybe the narrator was. I started to get the feeling that as her new life progressed, Offred was beginning to feel more and more like Moira did about men. She was confused by Nick but felt betrayed by him at the end, even if he was trying to help. She began to view the Commander not as a lonely man in need of a friend but as an arrogant man who only wanted to maniupulate her because he felt he could since she was a woman.

What I hoped for in the end did not come. Glad to be done. I didn't like the book but appreciate Margaret Atwood's skill in helping the reader feel the conflict of the individual characters, like them or not.

It was definitely an odd ending. Only took me five hours altogether to read it ! :)

Yeah, I read it in one night but didn't like it much. I expected something more, because my friend loves her books but maybe I have read too many weird future book lately, I felt no more with this. Society was horrible, and the most awful things were that she could remember time before all this. I liked her writing though, I might try some other book if topic is little more happier.

The end was quite happy for my opinion, I think there was hope. The history part in the end was, kind of interesting, how much we actually know about past or other culture if we didn't live there? we just expect to understand when we found some clues, but we cannot really know. It really made me think some countries nowadays and also V for Vendetta (movie) when Every reads those letters in the cell about woman who just wanna be remembered.

Finished last night. Good book, although a strange ending. Would love to know what finally happened to the narrator. Besides the obvious biblical references, I was thinking about the Marthas and the Martha who was doing the household duties while her sister Mary sat at her feet, and Sarah giving Hagar, her Handmaid, to Abraham so that he could have a child. Anyone else pick up on this?

I have been listening BBC archive and found Atwood's Desert island session which has released about time Handmaid's tale. She also comment on ending.

I just finished re-reading it (I first read it in high school) and I remember liking it when I read it then, but reading it now, in current political climate... wow! It's astounding! I think what Atwood does best is to make Offred just average....as most of us would be. We like the stories about the Moiras and the Ofglens and the Nicks of the world, those that fight back... but what about the majority, that doesn't fight, that just tries to get along? Seeing from that perspective is haunting.