The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the “sledge-hammer” of a novel, is a novel, even with all its “awkward moments”, is one that I really enjoyed, but more on that later. The story tells of a handmaid by the name of Offred, living in the society known as “Gilead”. Something that really interested me was the name of the society itself, and I knew it had to mean something. Upon researching the name, I discovered that the Hebrew form of Gilead, spelled Gil’ad, has a very interesting break down. In Hebrew, “Gil” means joy and “Ad” means forever or eternity. “The Republic of Gilead” can translate to “The Republic of Eternal Joy”. I find this really interesting and think it is a perfectly ironic name, seeing as everyone in the so-called Republic of Eternal Joy is miserable.

“He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off-key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.”

I particularly like this quote and the message it conveys. It is from Offred looking back on the past when she watched a show that told of how a Nazi death camp guard’s mistress denied that he was evil. It relates to Offred because she started to feel sympathy for the Commander, even though he was part of the reason she was in the miserable state she was, just like the woman who loved the Nazi who oversaw the killing of millions.

As a whole, I enjoyed this novel. It was never really “boring”, and I really liked the story it told. Offred seemed like a very “real” and believable character. Her insight into things was very human; unlike the characters in the other novels we read this year that were like robots. It makes you really think, and it is a novel I would definitely recommend to others.