Fiction Fans

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

• Episode 209

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Your hosts celebrate Banned Books Week 2025 by reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a book Lilly has (somehow) been able to avoid until now. They they talk about dystopian presents, sympathy for antagonists, and the double-edged sword of hope.

Content includes on-page sexual assault and coercion, and discussion of self harm and suicide.

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Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Lilly:

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books because we're still allowed to. I'm Lily,

Sara:

And I'm Sarah. And to celebrate Band book weeks 2025, celebrate. Is that the right word, mark?

Lilly:

uh, Acknowledge

Sara:

Yeah. To, to acknowledge Band Book weeks 2025. We are reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Lilly:

a book which has been banned and do deals with the civilization that has banned books. Peak irony. But before we get into that very light end up uplifting conversation, what's something good that happened recently? I feel like we need that for this episode more than almost any other.

Sara:

I do think we need it. But I realized that my answer is maybe a little more domestic than I want for this episode in particular,

Lilly:

Does it feel bad? Is it my banana bread during House of Penelope or Song of Penelope? Answer,

Sara:

yeah, like I made a great stew and it was really good and I served it to my father. And that's delightful, but also as an answer, feels too domestic for this book.

Lilly:

fuck that. We, we can enjoy taking care of the people we love even if some people wanna weaponize that.

Sara:

yes. Anyway. It was a good stew.

Lilly:

Congrats. Stew is, it's stew season. I had chili today. I, I'm on that vibe.

Sara:

I'm really mad actually, that earlier this week it was beautifully gray and rainy. And that's when I started making my stew plans. And then yesterday it was like hot and not actually stew weather, I made stew. Anyway,

Lilly:

and I'm sure it was still delicious.

Sara:

was still delicious.

Lilly:

My good thing starts with the fact that we watched the new Superman movie yesterday. That is not my good thing. The movie was fine, it was okay, but in it, Superman whistles for his dog several times and Oh my God, did the cats love that noise? It was so cute. Whatever they're doing, they would stop and sit and look at the screen and just like slowly tilt their head while, while the whistle was happening. And then s our social cat actually like stayed and watched the movie with us

Sara:

that's

Lilly:

just hung out while we watched the movie. Like she watched the movie.

Sara:

That's adorable. I

Lilly:

It was really cute. Yeah, it was great. So, 10 out of 10. Probably won't watch that movie again, but good experience. What are you drinking tonight? and why is it scotch? Because, do we need one to talk about this?

Sara:

I, I did actually think about drinking whiskey for this novel for this discussion. But I don't wanna drink a lot of hard liquor the night before, a work day. So I'm drinking wine, which is also mentioned in the book. Both drinks would've been book appropriate. I think

Lilly:

It is. I feel like the vibe is more hard liquor

Sara:

the vibe is definitely more hard liquor

Lilly:

just as far as like our official drink recommendation.

Sara:

Now I feel like I should change my drink. Go pour myself a whiskey.

Lilly:

well, I'm just drinking a ginger, lemon bubbly thing from Trader Joe's. So I'm not joining you and I'm a hypocrite to say it, but this book is also about hypocrisy, so it fits

Sara:

Okay, hold on while I go pour myself a Dr.

Lilly:

wonderful.

Sara:

Okay, whiskey in hand. I am ready to discuss this book.

Lilly:

Well, we have one more question before we actually dive in. Have we read anything not podcast related recently?

Sara:

Not really. I mean, I, I am still very slowly reading through the revised edition of Tolkien's Letters. I've read another, like one or two letters.

Lilly:

Nice. Well, why did we do this to ourselves? So. As you mentioned, we chose this book in acknowledgement in commemoration of Band Book week. I see why this book is banned. I see why it's really important. It was a good book. I have successfully avoided it. Actively avoided it my whole life.

Sara:

I am astonished, frankly, astonished that you managed to get away without reading it in high school

Lilly:

I don't remember it coming up really in school. I don't know. It just didn't,

Sara:

That's definitely where I first encountered it was some kind of English class.

Lilly:

yeah, like I knew it existed and I knew the general concept. And then of course, the TV show came out a couple of years ago and it was fucking everywhere. And everyone would go, why aren't you watching it? Why aren't you watching it? And I was like, why would I, that sounds terrible.

Sara:

Yeah. I don't need to watch something that's depressing like this. frankly if it weren't for us deciding to do it for Band Books week I would have been very happy to not have reread it.

Lilly:

so just to reorient our tone, I don't dislike this book.

Sara:

No.

Lilly:

I was actively avoiding it because it's, it feels a little too close to home and it did a couple of years ago when the show started. It super does now, and maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but I don't think I'm being that dramatic.

Sara:

I mean, it's a good book but it's also a very hard book to just because of like the themes of the book particularly in our current environment. So if you want to protect your mental health and not read it, I think that's a totally valid choice.

Lilly:

Yeah. I stand by my past decision to not read it. That being said, I'm glad I have, it was really well done. The pros is good. The pacing really makes the, I don't wanna say the setting bearable because I did still have to like, take breaks and walk away from this story, but I mean, it was really masterfully put together.

Sara:

I think it's a valuable book to read,

Lilly:

Yeah.

Sara:

but not an easy one.

Lilly:

No, but I mean, we shouldn't only read easy books,

Sara:

No.

Lilly:

but also maybe like, not right now.

Sara:

Well, and we did have this discussion when we were settling our calendar because it is still spooky month. And we wanted to find a book that fit both band books week and spooky Month thematically. And it's true that this is a little bit of a reach for spooky month. But I think it's spooky how prescient it was.

Lilly:

I mean, I, I don't think it's a reach for, for Spooky month. I think it is deeply horrifying. Not in, it's not exactly horror. It's

Sara:

not, it's not what one traditionally thinks of as spooky, I'll put it that way.

Lilly:

Yeah, there's no ghosts, no hauntings in this book, although there kind of is she's kind of haunted by the handmade that lived in her room before her, but that's kind of her doing it to herself.

Sara:

And she's also haunted by thoughts of her family.

Lilly:

Yeah. So before we go too much farther, think most listeners probably have the basic idea at least of what this book is about. But in case you don't, it takes place in a society where everyone has very strict roles and one of the roles that a woman might have is basically being a, a surrogate. But I mean, forced surrogacy is gross and bad, so it's horrifying.

Sara:

they're, they're, they're surrogates in a gross way, not the beautiful way.

Lilly:

Yeah. In a dystopian way.

Sara:

Yes.

Lilly:

I was surprised because I, I had known sort of that concept, right, that the handmaids were women in society who had to sleep or sleep with men. It's this crazy ceremony where the wife like holds her down. It

Sara:

The, they're basically, they're basically concubines and they have a very awkward ceremony once a month where the man tries to impregnate the handmaid and the wife is present.

Lilly:

Yeah. And it's it ends up being the wife's baby. It's a, you know, surrogacy except all fucked up. I was shocked at how near future the book was and not in a, oh, it's so like today way, but like. The main character remembers normal life. She went to college. She had a family before the revolution that created this fucked up society, and kind of blew my mind. It was heartbreaking because she knew what had been taken away. She was aware of the situation she was in, and for some reason I thought that it was took place farther in the future when it had already become normalized. But then I thought about it and I think if the main character was like a true believer, this book would be actually unbearable.

Sara:

I think so. I, I agree with you. In one sense, I think it would've been harder as the reader to follow along with a main character who was a true believer. But if you think about and we don't know her real name, we just know the name that that she is given, which is Alfred or of Fred, because Fred is her like commander. The, the man whom she is servicing.

Lilly:

Head of the household.

Sara:

when I think about it from the point of view of she knows what she has lost, that is more horrifying. On a personal level, but it's easier on a reader level. Does that make sense?

Lilly:

It makes total sense. And that's why I was like so mad about it at first and then kind of cave around to No, I'll take the easy way out on this one. Sorry, off red. But that's something that she kind of addresses in the book too, talking about how the, the girls who are getting married off, might have some memories of norm of normal hood normalcy, but they're gonna be like the last ones and it's gonna be so much easier for them to sort of assimilate.

Sara:

Well, and that's the commander's like whole point too. he basically tells Alfred that, yeah, it sucks for you, but it's not gonna suck for the people who come later, which. I mean, I disagree with, it's still gonna suck for them, but just in a very different way.

Lilly:

Yeah, and fuck that guy. But we'll talk about that a

Sara:

Yeah. I mean, yes. Fuck, fuck that guy. But

Lilly:

I do like, however, how sympathetic the main character is to the people around her. She is in a really shitty situation, right? And there's like some conversation around she technically chose this, but she is, is basically threatened with her very young daughter's life.

Sara:

it is dubious consent at best,

Lilly:

I mean, yeah, at best,

Sara:

at, at best.

Lilly:

under, under duress.

Sara:

she's definitely under duress,

Lilly:

Yeah, I mean, if, if it's hey, be sexually assaulted every month until you produce children or. Go clean up nuclear waste with no protective gear and die definitely painfully in three short years. Is that a choice? Is that free? A free choice to make.

Sara:

Not really.

Lilly:

Okay. But despite how shitty her situation is, she acknowledges and really sympathizes with the people around her and how shitty their situations also are, which I, I don't wanna say I enjoyed reading, but while you're reading this and reading about the, the wives, the capital W wives, because wife is one of the roles that, and it is self-explanatory, their position also sucks. So like having to weirdly share their husband kind of, and they're definitely. Not valued as much because they can't have children. And fertility is like the only thing that matters about women in this society.

Sara:

some of the wives I will, I will quibble just a little bit. Some of the wives are fertile and can have children. It's only the ones who aren't where the commander gets a handmade

Lilly:

True. But that's still a, you don't know that until you try.

Sara:

Yes.

Lilly:

So it, you're still like, their position is always not fragile. Delicate, precarious, precarious is the word.

Sara:

Yeah. I mean, it, it sucks. For sure. I, I don't want to. Disagree there. I just wanted to clarify slightly.

Lilly:

Yeah. And our main character acknowledges that and she's like, wow, this really sucks for them. I just appreciated reading about this situation through someone having the same reaction to it as I was.

Sara:

She had a very understandable reaction to everything. I think. Like she didn't Serena Joy, the, the wife in her household, but she also acknowledged that it sucked for Serena Joy and I Yeah, like, like you said, I appreciated that. Just because people are nuanced and, and do have, sometimes conflicting emotions about situations and, and things.

Lilly:

And. The reader wasn't left to make that connection themselves. I mean obviously I did while I was reading the book.'cause it's very obvious how upsetting this is for Serena Joy. acknowledging that ambiguity takes some of the ambiguity out of it for the reader, if that makes sense.

Sara:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Lilly:

some books I worry and you hear about people just totally missing the point. This book, I don't think you possibly could.

Sara:

No, I think this book is very clear that it might suck a little less for some of the women depending on the position, but it sucks for all of the women.

Lilly:

Yeah. And a lot of the men too, like it's not, it's not a good place to be.

Sara:

No,

Lilly:

Hot takes on fiction. Fans wouldn't wanna live in Gilead. I think to me, the biggest bad guy, or the most unequivocable bad guy were the s.

Sara:

So I agree with you. I, there is a sequel to this book apparently, which is not something I've read. It's, it's called the Testament, I think, and it came out in 2017 or so. And one of the characters is an aunt and she turns out to be. A good guy or like actively working against Gilead which I think is fascinating. I can't decide not having read it also, is that a spoiler for a book that hasn't

Lilly:

That we're not talking about at all. Yeah. Maybe.

Sara:

yeah. I, but it's, it's weird because like I have these feelings about the statement that, that are wrapped up in my reading of the Wikipedia summary of the sequel.

Lilly:

Ah, fuck it. Let's roll with it. Sorry guys.

Sara:

I'm not saying,

Lilly:

Don't say who it

Sara:

yeah, I'm not saying anything else about the character. But, I can't decide if I feel like that is trying to kind of retroactively make the aunts less bad or not. Again, because I haven't read the, book. So I have these very half baked feelings.

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Sara:

But if we take the story of the Handmaid's Tale as its own, you know, separate, fully fleshed thing, I agree that the aunts in the Handmaid's Tale are the worst.

Lilly:

The aunts are the ones who are basically the, the trainers for the Handmaids, the programmers, if you will. They run the, the weird camp. That trains normal human being women to be I don't know,

Sara:

brainwashed.

Lilly:

I mean, it doesn't really work clearly. They don't care if they're brainwashed. They just want them obedient.

Sara:

I mean, I, I feel like that's close enough.

Lilly:

yeah, they'd love for them to be brainwashed, I suppose. It's just interesting because in this book, do we actually meet a single handmaid who is a true believer? They're all just faking it and terrified that all of the other ones around them are true believers.

Sara:

I mean, I would argue maybe that Janine a little bit is a true believer.

Lilly:

yeah. And she does just like absolutely disconnect. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.

Sara:

the one thing that I was wondering about in this book is how many people do you have to have, go along with things in order to create a society where you can do this? Right.

Lilly:

Mm,

Sara:

Like it just is kind of, I don't know, mind boggling that they were able to form the republic and have it be so,

Lilly:

totalitarian

Sara:

totalitarian and puritanical in what seems to me a fairly short period of time. I, time is kind of wibbly wobbly in this book offered is not necessarily the most reliable of narrators.

Lilly:

Because she's just recalling stuff that happened to her years ago.

Sara:

yeah,

Lilly:

we get bits and pieces, We don't get like a full history of the world because that's just not what

Sara:

that's,

Lilly:

is worried about.

Sara:

that's, that's not what this book is.

Lilly:

She spends much more time trying to remember what her 4-year-old daughter's face looked like which is heartbreaking. But anyway, we get bits and pieces and hints that there was some kind of environmental catastrophe. There are genuinely huge issues with reproductive health, which is ostensibly why the handmade system got put into place to begin with, much of the country, the United States. That is, which is what Gilead kind of came out of. Much of that region is uninhabitable due to contamination, toxic waste. There's the word nuclear gets thrown around a little bit, but it's not clear if there was actually a nuclear war. So it definitely sounds like there was a genuine disaster that people then took advantage of in order to enforce their values.

Sara:

I mean, I, yes, I think that the, the two things are connected. But again, you still have to have an awful lot of people go along with this governmental coup to have it be so successful.

Lilly:

Mm. So I think a lot of people died, is what I'm saying. If a bunch of people died, then the percentage of people in the coup becomes much larger just by default.

Sara:

Maybe I, that's not the, the impression that I got from the book, but I suppose it's possible it irrelevant either way, but

Lilly:

you're just, you know, wondering about the specifics for absolutely no reason. Yeah.

Sara:

no reason. Yep.

Lilly:

The flashback to win our main character and her husband Luke, were trying to flee the country before it got as bad as it is in the quote unquote present day was chilling.

Sara:

Yeah,

Lilly:

Anyway,

Sara:

as, as we've said, rough book to read right now,

Lilly:

what were we thinking?

Sara:

we were thinking it was appropriate for Band Books week, and it is,

Lilly:

True. There are a couple of concepts that this book touches on that it, it doesn't exactly. Well, okay. Authoritarianism bad. I think we can agree the book is saying,

Sara:

yes.

Lilly:

but there are other, some, there are some other concepts explored that are less black and white in the novel. There are a couple of different angles on adultery that I thought were fascinating. In, in the flashbacks in the, before our main character has an affair, like her eventual husband was a married man. But then comparing that situation to the, like, I don't wanna keep saying fucked up'cause I think it's getting repetitive, but I also wanna start every sentence with this fucked up thing.

Sara:

I mean, I think it's interesting. I think the book is, is commenting on how religion can be misused,

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Sara:

To impose on everyone who is not necessarily religious in the same way. Again, relevant.

Lilly:

Well, and then you get the idea that she can't be disloyal to the commander even though he is not her husband. Like it is very clear. But it would be a, a transgression on penalty of death if she were found to be disloyal to the, the head of household compared to the commander who has to cheat on his actual wife with these Handmaids, it's. Complex and I don't know, I think the thing that had me shouting at this book the most is how thin the veneer of, we need to repopulate the, the country we need to repopulate civilization. Birth rates are abysmally low and we do see, or we hear some facts that like even out of live births only what half of them are actually viable.

Sara:

Yeah, a a bunch of babies are born with defects and it, it's not clear whether these are defects that genuinely make life impossible for the child, or if they are just not, you know, the blonde haired, blue eyed babies that they want.

Lilly:

Yeah, the, the eugenics angle is very quiet until the very end, which I thought was interesting but not ignored entirely.

Sara:

So maybe these babies are viable and it's, they're just you know, considered not the right kind of child, but

Lilly:

the the story we hear is that they are born with something that makes them incompatible with life, but how much of this book, how much of of the things that we hear are, is actually true? We know our main character is being fed propaganda. We know that. And so you also kind of are coming through this going well.

Sara:

And, and the one child that we see born is thought to be a quote unquote, like, good baby when it comes out. And then we're later told that something was wrong with it. So I, I just, I think there's some ambiguity there. And you

Lilly:

But they also refuse to do any like pre healthcare or anything, so it is possible.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

Okay. But that, so that was the thing.

Sara:

maybe the child is born with Down syndrome, which viable child, you can have a perfectly happy life, but in like doesn't fit their, you know?

Lilly:

They're ideals, but it's not even like the, all of these systems that have been put into place are like, they break down with even a second of. Critical thought that, that it's not actually about reproduction, it's just about power and controlling women, which shock.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

But'cause almost all of the things that they do, like don't actually make any sense. And maybe I was just like hyper aware of it as someone who has been actively family planning, quote unquote for like two fucking years. So every time I read that, like the ceremony happens once a month or maybe twice a month, it might be two days in a row, and it's like, well, the best chances of conception, it should be three days leading up to ovulation and then the day of ovulation. And also they're not testing for when they're ovulating at all. So.

Sara:

It's, it's a weird

Lilly:

You can't just guess when you're fertile. That's not how it works.

Sara:

It's a, it's a weird mix of like religious pseudoscience and like you say, this veneer of it being about fertility,

Lilly:

Yeah. But we know that they do have like science and and medicine. There were medical doctors, there are still some medical doctors. They go in for health checkups occasionally. So like they know.

Sara:

the doctors aren't present at birth because they're men.

Lilly:

sure. But the point is there is knowledge for how reproduction works. And so the fact that they're willingly just like not actually. Oh yeah. And the, the men who get handmaids are all very old and that is like not maximum fertility either. So if it was actually about making babies, those are not the men who should be getting handmaids.

Sara:

Yeah, I mean the, the implication is that the men are getting handmaids because they are sterile and not the wives, except men can't be sterile. That's just not a thing. And so it has to be the wives who are sterile. So the men get handmaids and then still no babies and Wow. I wonder why.

Lilly:

yeah, that's right. That's on the page. So you don't even have to be like knee deep in the shit to,

Sara:

Yeah, no.

Lilly:

to recognize. But, but also, like, there were a couple of other things that I was like making frantic notes about that did get addressed. Prenatal vitamins, they're not called that, but we do eventually find out that the Handmaids do take a multivitamin every day. So I was like, okay. So at least they're kind of trying. They're pretending.

Sara:

it's really half-hearted.

Lilly:

Yeah. That just made me so angry. But I mean, of course it's actually about control and not actually about babies.'cause that's what it always is.

Sara:

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's absolutely about power.

Lilly:

Yeah. And there's a lot more of that to talk about. But I do think we should move to the spoiler section because this was a really good book. I am glad I read it. It was hard, but it was worth it.

Sara:

I would not lie. I would have been just as happy not having re-read it. I did read it in school. I am. Fairly sure. I say fairly sure because that was a long time ago by now.

Lilly:

But you had read it before, so.

Sara:

but I'm, I'm pretty sure I'd read it before. It's a good book. I just sometimes don't wanna read terrible things. And this book is full of terrible things, but it's a good book. It's well written. It's, it's,

Lilly:

It's very thoughtful.

Sara:

it's very thoughtful. It is a timely read. I think the popularity of it is well deserved. so it's worth reading. I just didn't like it or I didn't like reading it. The book itself, I, I do think it's a good book.

Lilly:

If you're the type of person who rewatched contagion during lockdown of like COVID Lockdowns, highly recommend this book. Pick it Up Today if you like leaning into it in that way.

Sara:

I don't have anything to add to that.

Lilly:

I mean, except I'm a hypocrite.'cause that was absolutely me. but now with this book I'm like, ugh, no, too much. Too much. But with the book, you can set it down when it gets to be too much. I mean, you can pause a movie too, but that's weirder.

Sara:

I mean, yes you can set a book down. It's harder when you're supposed to read a book a week, and you have a very limited time in which to

Lilly:

Okay. We did that to ourselves. Everything about this we did to ourselves.

Sara:

as per usual.

Lilly:

Yeah. This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by fiction fans.

Sara:

That's us. We really appreciate our patrons because otherwise we fund this podcast entirely ourselves.

Lilly:

Patrons can find weekly bonus content, monthly exclusive episodes, and get free access to our biannual zine solstice.

Sara:

You can find all of that and more at patreon.com/fiction fans pod. Thank you for all of your support.

Lilly:

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers, so the commander was a fascinating character, the commander, so the, the head of household that our main character is in. He starts out being introduced and is kind of a sympathetic character. He doesn't take more advantage of his situation. He seems to be trying to make things easier on our main character. he asks for things that they both know she can't say no to, but it's dumb shit like playing Scrabble.

Sara:

I mean, I would, I would argue that kiss me like, you mean it is not quite dumb shit, but it's not at the level of like a blow job or something.

Lilly:

the more we see of him, the worse he gets.

Sara:

his problem is that he wants a loving relationship and. He doesn't have it with his wife, Serena and he can't have it with Alfred just by the nature of the power imbalance, but he doesn't recognize that and he takes advantage of it,

Lilly:

Fascinating. That was not how I read it at all. I interpreted him as just a straight up hypocrite. I thought that he was pushing boundaries with Alfred to see if he could get away with it, if she would let him, you know, do something small and then try to doing something more later. I think he got off on the power. I think he knew that she couldn't say no. To me, the nail in the coffin. The coffin of my opinion of him was when they're having kind of like a little philosophical debate in his office before things got super weird between them and that like they had gotten their new normal, which was they would secretly play Scrabble because she's technically, it's illegal for her to read. He is talking about this new society and how it's so much better for women because before they would be objectified and you know, could be assaulted by men and now they're protected and. Because they have these crazy uniforms, like they're not, I mean, as we know from the Victorian era, you can still objectify someone who's modest. But his argument was that it's, things are better. Women have a better situation because none of that awful sexual stuff is forced on them anymore. And then we find out about sex workers.

Sara:

So.

Lilly:

And so all of those awful well that he called awful and then in this case are awful because it's not by choice, but which don't have to be awful. All those awful things are still happening. So women have a worst place in society and all these terrible things, quote unquote terrible things are still happening,

Sara:

I,

Lilly:

and they're just.

Sara:

I don't, I don't disagree that he's a hypocrite. I think he's absolutely a hypocrite, but I don't think that it is, I don't think that he recognizes that. Like I, I think that he is the true believer that, that you were worried that offered would be right. Like he genuinely believes in what he's saying and doesn't recognize the disconnect between what he says and what he does. And yeah, he's horrible. Like no question about that. But I get a different tenor from. Their relationship then I think you did, but it's still a bad, it's still bad.

Lilly:

Oh, it's, it is bad, but how much of it is he aware of?

Sara:

yeah, yeah.

Lilly:

I don't think he has any excuse for not having a, like, what? He doesn't have a loving relationship with his wife, Serena Joy. Like that's a bad excuse.

Sara:

no, I'm not saying it's an excuse. Like I'm not, I I don't think he has an excuse. I agree with you,

Lilly:

but the only reason why is the. The circumstances that he created, we find out that he was like one of the architects of this new culture. We're not sure exactly how,

Sara:

that, that is, that is the, there's like a meta commentary at the end, and the meta commentary is saying, oh, it was probably the commander was probably this person who was one of the architects, so. Yes. I mean, he has no excuse. He is one of the architects. It is his fault.

Lilly:

so he's going, woe is me. Why my wife is mad that I invented forced concubines and now she doesn't like me anymore. And so I need to make the conine nice to me because she won't be nice to

Sara:

I like, I think, I think that is what he is doing and it is absolutely awful. I want to be clear about that. Like he is not a good person. But I like, I think that it is the actions of someone who has always had power and doesn't always like recognize that.

Lilly:

Maybe except the last handmade committed suicide because of his attention, and he couldn't figure that out.

Sara:

I didn't say he was smart

Lilly:

I, I think that's giving him too much, credit,

Sara:

leeway.

Lilly:

credit maybe. Yeah.

Sara:

I just never, never ascribed to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence. I think he's incompetent and not malicious. I mean, it's, it's malicious in the end too. But

Lilly:

I don't know. It, it feels more malevolent than that to me.

Sara:

he just feels pathetic to me. Not, not malevolent, just pathetic.

Lilly:

I see. I, I don't know if he gets that out, but we did get the scene with the, the underground kind of nightclub thing which I was waiting for. Like, that felt so gratifying as the reader, not'cause that I wanted women to be forced into that position obviously. But it, it was kind of the final, another nail in another coffin because obviously as we're reading this all of the justifications we hear for why society should be like this ring false because. Gross and what the fuck, et cetera. And so seeing proof that like, yeah, things haven't changed you've just pushed sexuality into secrecy which is only bad for the women involved. again, I was just glad that Atwood put it on the page. We didn't have to make that assumption or leap to that conclusion. Even if you had, you know, after chapter one, you feel very justified by the end where it's like, yeah, indeed. Nothing is operating the way they say it does. You were right all along Lily, actually wrote that, I don't know if you caught that in that chapter. At the end, she was like, Hey, Lily, guess what? You were right.

Sara:

I mean, I, I did I did see that in her end notes where, you know, where she talks all about the book. She was like, Lily, you were write about everything.

Lilly:

Yeah. That's where also where we see Moira come back, who was our main character's best friend before the revolution and has been kind of one of her beacons of hope. Moira escaped the compound. The aunt training

Sara:

detention center.

Lilly:

detention center. I think they had a word for it. I don't remember what it

Sara:

It's, it's the, like the, the red Leah something,

Lilly:

Rachel and Leah. I think those are Bible names. I don't know. Oh welcome to my fun experience of having one of our, aunts or uncles be a really bad, bad guy in a book hearing about Aunt Elizabeth being the head aunt and all the awful things she did. I was like, no, not Aunt Elizabeth. I don't know if you remember, but in the Hellbound heart, the main bad guy is Uncle Frank and I had to read that whole book. Yeah.

Sara:

I, I do remember that. Remember that.

Lilly:

anyway, not actually relevant, but Moira escaped. She escaped the detention center and our main character creates this possibility in her head that Moira might come back for her. And she's very realistic. She knows that that's not super likely. The same thing with her husband, Luke. She says like, I know he's still alive. I know that he escaped and is living in Canada. I know that he got captured and is stuck in jail somewhere. And I know that they killed him on site. Like I know all of these things are true. Really is a long way of saying she has no idea what happened, but she wants him to be alive. So she has decided to know that and we see her kind of keep herself going in this awful situation through basically sheer willpower and self delusion until she runs back into Moira, who might have escaped the compound, but did basically event end up getting brought back in except as a sex worker instead of a handmaid. And she is kind of okay with where she ended up, and that's heartbreaking for our main character.

Sara:

Yeah, Moira has accepted her, her position in life, she's like, it's not so bad. Most of the women here are lesbians too, so they turn a blind eye to that here, it's fine, but it's not like a good life at all. and it's, it's also not the life that the main character offered has imagined for Moira. And I think that seeing the reality is. Hard for her.

Lilly:

yeah, well, Moira had been a protestor for forever. I mean, she, she's the only one who escaped the compound. And, and then before as

Sara:

Yeah. I, I think to see Moira kind of indifferent to what's happened, not indifferent, but you know what I mean, like ac accepting. Yeah. I think that's really hard because previously Moira has had a lot of energy to protest and now she is like, I can't do it anymore. I'm, I'm just going to, you know, survive here and that's fine.

Lilly:

And our main character does acknowledge, which again, I very much appreciated that Moira had become like her. She had always been, I mean, she didn't like being a handmaid, but she had accepted it and leaned into it for her own survival with the understanding that someone else out there was doing something about it and then finding out that the person she thought was out there doing something about it wasn't kind of put her whole situation into a different perspective because

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

even though it wasn't likely, she still was able to build that hope around it.

Sara:

Yeah, it's, it's like that one little nugget of hope she had was taken away when she saw lawyer.

Lilly:

Yeah. Which is nuts because by that point she's met off Glen. I love off Glen. She's the one I loved her character intro because of Glen shows up and our main character is like, oh no, she's like so poised and perfect. She must be a true believer, although I am also nailing this, so she might think the same thing about me. And just that it like understanding, I really appreciated knowing that someone might be putting on a front to survive rather than truly believing what they're saying. I think that gets lost a lot in dystopian books.

Sara:

Yeah, absolutely.

Lilly:

But then we find out that of Glen is part of the resistance. There is a resistance. She's part of it. She's trying to get our main character to like help and participate. She has access to the commander who we know in the story itself Also is someone very high up not just from the meta thing at the end,

Sara:

I, I mean, Alfred doesn't seem to, to realize that, but offline,

Lilly:

Glen is trying to tell her. But by the time of Glen is really like not working hard to recruit off Alfred but has truly accepted the off. Alfred, like can be trusted. She's already given up. She has found an outlet for affection in her tri with Nick. Moira has, I don't wanna say failed her'cause that's so unfair. But Moira is not the superhuman image that she made up in her head and she kind of, I mean, she doesn't leave offline out to dry, but

Sara:

No, but she, she.

Lilly:

Sure doesn't help.

Sara:

she does give up, like she turns inward to the only source of affection that she has, which is Nick. And that's the only thing she can think about. She can't think about anything else.

Lilly:

It's just momentary comfort

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

instead of big picture.

Sara:

Which on the one hand I get, but on the other hand, like, girl, you could help the resistance.

Lilly:

It Okay. I go so back and forth on her angst about Nick. At first it really, well, it didn't really bothered me. I understood again, she has to have hope. She has to believe that Luke, her husband, is still alive in order to like have the will to go on. But that means she must believe that she is cheating on her husband with Nick. So she's kind of worked herself into this logical corner. So to some extent I get why she feels so bad about sleeping with Nick. I don't think she should,

Sara:

No, she, she should not. She should not.

Lilly:

Except then she started leaving hints in the narrative, like, this room is dangerous. I tell him things I shouldn't. I talk too much. I act like a dunce. I should know better. All of those were direct quotes, not at the same time, but direct quotes. About how much she's sharing with him. She says, she tells him about off Glen and Moira. And so all of that felt like it was building up to, she trusted the wrong man and he betrays her. And so she feels so much guilt retroactively because she knows what ends up happening and that's why she feels so bad that she sleeps with him, except then he ends up being a good guy. So I still don't get it, and I don't get why she made such a big deal about it.

Sara:

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I, I do think that it is a little ambiguous whether he's a good guy or not, but he doesn't blatantly betray her.

Lilly:

well, he, he helps her get out when her life is probably in danger because Serena Joy finds out about her relationship with the Commander.

Sara:

Well, we think that he does based on the very biased like 200 years later meta commentary at the end. We don't actually know for sure. It's, I don't know, like I, because everything is so unreliable, I hesitate to say that he definitely helps her. I think I. Land more on the side of, he does help her get out, but we don't actually know what happens to her. We just know that her like testimony, these diaries are found at some later point.

Lilly:

So I, while I was reading this book, assumed that this was just her internal monologue. It makes sense. So much of the story is so internal. She just has to live in her own head while this world exists around her. So finding out that this was actually supposed to be a manuscript or recorded tapes, I think she

Sara:

Yeah. Re recorded tapes.

Lilly:

kind of blew my mind. I was unprepared for that. Which meant I was ready for her to die at any moment because she doesn't have to be alive to write down her story in past tense because I didn't think this was actually a story. when we got to that end and Nick says, you know, those guys are not actually the secret police. They're actually here to smuggle you out. Go with them. Don't make a fuss. And she says, I have no way to know if he's telling the truth, but I might as well go with it.'cause my fat's the same either way. I thought it ended there and it was like, whoa, so ambiguous. But I, I think, I agree with our academic meta commentators that just the fact that she was able to tell this story in this form means that she must have gotten out somehow.

Sara:

Yes, I agree that she must have gotten out somehow. I don't necessarily think that that was Nick. I think that was probably Nick, but I don't think that the, the story. enough for me to say with certainty that it was,

Lilly:

Except if she's telling this in past tense, she would know if he had betrayed her or not.

Sara:

yeah, but she's an unre. We know that She's an unreliable narrator and it ends,

Lilly:

I mean, she's unreliable in that she doesn't know things, but she's not unreliable in that. Like we catch her lying to us,

Sara:

she doesn't. She doesn't make stuff up, but she is still ambiguous about everything. Like she doesn't say that Nick didn't betray her.

Lilly:

No, that would just be a wild thing to leave out.

Sara:

Given, given where it ended, I don't know

Lilly:

Maybe. But like, why would she leave that out? That doesn't make sense.

Sara:

why would she end it there?

Lilly:

Okay. Maybe they're missing a tape. I did really like that sort of framing device at the end, that these were tapes found, you know, in some basement later

Sara:

Yeah, unsurprisingly, that was my favorite bit of the book because I really like academic text. And so I liked the academic commentary at the end. I would have read a whole book about that. Even though the guy giving the speech is kind of a douche bag.

Lilly:

he making light of the situation and like funny jokes because he's giving a presentation to students or whatever, drove me nuts.

Sara:

It makes so much sense though. Like this is something that happened away in the past. He's removed. He's not a woman. He wouldn't have gone through it anyway. Like I got why he did it.

Lilly:

And that's so poignant too, right? Like after all of these things that she goes through, she gets used as a punchline.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

But also I, I really needed that at the end for a couple of reasons. One, it, well, actually no, it, it does kind of tell us that Gilead and this culture does not last

Sara:

I mean, there's, there's no actually about it. It's, it straight up tells us.

Lilly:

Well, I was trying to figure out if women had regained equality, and I assumed that, that the answer was yes, but we don't actually know if there are female students in the audience, I don't think.

Sara:

But I'm pretty sure that they talk about female researchers.

Lilly:

Yeah. Okay. I, they, I thought so.

Sara:

So like the impression that I was left with was that there was gender equality of some sort. Anyway,

Lilly:

That's what I wanted it to be. I was just ready for you to actually me,

Sara:

no, I'm not, I'm not gonna actually on this one.

Lilly:

but I needed that by the time I got to this book to have it end. It doesn't tell us how they brought down this awful society, but ending on the note that it is finite, I think really helped, especially with how am ambiguous the narrator's situation is knowing that at least there is kind of a happy ending in the big picture.

Sara:

Yeah. It's, it's like that one note of hope that Moira provides to narrator.

Lilly:

It also gives us a little bit of concrete detail after all of the ambiguous world building because the main character only knows what she's heard and so much of what she has heard is propaganda, as we've mentioned extensively.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

And so it does give us a little bit of like, okay, these, these things we know for sure. They did actually give Jewish people a chance to leave this theocratic hellhole. They did also sink their boats in the middle of the ocean. Um.

Sara:

It, it just, it's, it's a fascinating glimpse at the world in a, in a way that, yeah, I really enjoyed,

Lilly:

And I was really not expecting that I entirely out of left field. I think my ebook even, you know how when you get near the end of a book, before the like end pages Kindle gives you a popup and is like, this is the book you just read. Wanna rate it?

Sara:

yeah, like market. Market is red on good reads.

Lilly:

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that popped up before that chapter. And I was like, oh, is there an afterwards, like, is there something by Margaret Atwood? Because sometimes the copies that we get our hands on have those, and that was something I was like, interested in. And I had that and I was like, is is this a joke? Is this actually part of the text? Is this a preview of the next book? Like, what? But no, it is, it, it sounds like it is actually part of the text.

Sara:

is, it is actually part of the text. Yeah, it that's just there, there is this academic meta commentary afterwards.

Lilly:

And I'm glad I won. Wouldn't go so far as to say it was my favorite part of the book, but it was an absolutely necessary part of the book.

Sara:

It was my favorite part of the book to no one's surprise, like I said.

Lilly:

Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Sara:

Come disagree with us! We're on Blue Sky and Instagram, at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com. Or leave a comment on YouTube.

Lilly:

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Sara:

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Lilly:

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!