The Handmaid's Tale Part 1

While reading this book I could not help but find it to be a mix of 1984, the HBO series Big Brother, and the Polygamist sect that was recently broken up. In the Gilead society, reading and certain words have become forbidden in much the same way 1984 had its own Newspeak language. Women have become subjected to being a mix between nuns (although nuns were ironically celebit) and a second wife. This book seems to imply a form of Mormon fanatics tooks over the United States. I say Mormons because of the use of polygamy and focus on the Old Testament. The Gilead society uses the Bible frequently and justifies its actions through it but only passages from the Old Testament are used. Any other Christian society would know to focus more on the New Testament because Jesus came to change the old to the new.

This book focuses a lot upon the change of sex from an act of pleasure and procreation to merely a chore of reproduction in much the same way it had become in 1984. In fact this book is so familiar to George Orwell's novel that I frequently got them mixed up. The only major difference is that in 1984 the new socialist society embraced technological advancements but the Gilead society seemed to shun away from technology as maybe an immoral symbol of the old "savage" age.