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The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood discusses the generation divide she notices when people respond to her book
The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood finds that younger people are more likely to take the novel’s message seriously
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In 1985, Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel set in a dystopian future run by religious zealots, where women are second-class citizens with no rights. Readers sat up and paid attention. The book has sold more than eight million copies, and it has been adapted as a film and television series. It’s been taught in classrooms and dissected at the highest scholarly levels. However, not everyone has responded to the novel in the same way.
During an interview on the PBS show Brief but Spectacular, Atwood spoke about the generational disconnect she sees when people respond to her work.
“In the States, it was mixed. It was either, ‘This will never happen because we’re beyond this, and how could you even think that we would do such a thing.’ And on the other hand, ‘How long have we got.’ So, some people said how long have we got, and other people said surely not. The people who said surely not tended to be older, and the people who said how long have we got tended to be younger.”
In that way, the book and its television adaptation have become somewhat of a fusion between a litmus test and a Rorschach test. As the line continues to blur between the real world and the fictional Gilead, the disconnect has only grown stronger.
Will The Handmaid’s Tale be moved from the fiction section to the non-fiction section? It all depends on what we do next.
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