To me, this book is niether good nor bad. It's not really anything. Just reading to go through the steps and then write an essay so I can get a decent grade and then erase this portion of my life from my mind. I guess more than anything this book annoys me. Atwood tries to be deep and metephorical with her writing, ending paragraphs with a "meaningful" statement almost every page, for instance when Atwood's talking about Dolores when she "wet the floor", "what did they do to her? we whipsered, from bed to bed. I don't know. not knowing makes it worse." This sounds like Atwood is trying to make this eerie and deep when it's about something like peeing on the floor... Another scene is where offred is going to watch the birth, Atwood makes it sound again, deep and serious. Then she comes along with stuff like the "birthmobile" and I can't take it seriously.
Something else that annoys me is how not straight forward this book is. We learn about how the war/take-over happens over half way through the book. I just don't like inferring stuff, I like straight forward, no bullshit, answers.
"a rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze" yea, makes sense.
I can't wait till we're done with this book and move on to fight club
Yeah man I agree, I don't like how the book skips around alot in time without warning and how nothing eventful has really happened so far, all shes really taking about is her life in Gilead and how it is different from the past, which is interesting to a point, but something needs to happen.
ReplyDeleteYea, I don't like the indirectness of this book either it makes it hard to get into as much when you don't know exactly what is going on and why. She definitley tries to describe things too deeply, things that don't really even need a description like the curtains or the exact color of blue.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I hear, this book jumps around a lot. I don't like that. And I can see why you don't either. You put out a good point. Things should be straight forward, not annoying and trying to confuse the reader.
ReplyDeleteWould you keep reading if you already knew all the answers? The main character has this feeling that she wishes she knew what is happening outside of her realm and she wants to know where her loved ones are. She can't think about the past becasue she wants to keep living, it would be too hard for her to do that. So she stays in the present. I think that's the point of leaving all this information out. You go through the boring life that a Handmaid has to live through. Same routine daily, same food, same people.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the sense that it is really annoying that you dont really know whats going on you just know whats comming out of her mouth, or on to the paper. Its frustrating when she talks about her past cause you dont know what happened from then to now and how things got so screwed up.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the whole ending in a "meaningful" statement. I like alot about this book but it annoys me as well when you have no idea whats going on. Its hard to put yourself in a situation like this one. YES TO FIGHT CLUB!
ReplyDeleteI agree that you don't want to beat around the bush to figure out what the meaning of the book is. It should be more evident instead of the constant inferences. It's difficult to try and follow Atwood's thoughts when she starts in depth memories and implications randomly throughout a chapter. it makes it extremely hard to follow.
ReplyDeleteIvan,
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you are finding the book (and its in-your-face-feminism) hard to swallow (but even when we get to Fight Club, we'll hear Tyler grousing about how he and his peers are ":a generation of men raised by women"--so maybe this book is just getting you ready).
I think Chancee's point about the narrative stance is well taken, and I hope you'll appreciate the justification for all this 'jumping around' that we get in the end.
Thanks for hanging in there (but don't erase all this from your mind! You have plenty of brain space available!).