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/lit/ - Literature

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13976499 No.13976499 [Reply] [Original]

Just started reading

>Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale.

for a class on English literature I'm taking this fall. What am I in for?

>> No.13976840

faggot

>> No.13976853

>>13976499
Liberal angst about reproduction as slavery. The most terrifying thing to professional while woman is being a mother.

>> No.13976933

>>13976499
Upper middle class white wamen complaining about Reagan and, in a typical but still shocking display of privilege, comparing having the loosest abortion laws in the West slightly restricted to slavery and Iran tier theocracy.

>> No.13976959

It's the masturbation fantasy of a sadomasochist rape fetishist. It falsely accuses Christians of being what Muslims actually are.

>> No.13976972

Trash. Buy the quick notes summary. Otherwise you are going to ruin your own writing ability by consuming low quality literature. You are what you read. I'd rather fail the class and still have my mind and the ability to pen what emanates.

>> No.13976983

>>13976499
Handmaid’s Tale is meant to reassure every wretched office-worker who goes home to a cat, a VCR, and Pizza-for-one that her life is noble and progressive. Handmaid’s Tale is fun horror-fiction for women who work in the American-style cubicle-world precisely because it’s so utterly unrelated to the miseries and terrors of their own lives. No one wants to force middle-class American women to have babies. In fact, it’s almost impossible for them to contemplate having kids, because they’re terrified that it might set them back in their careers, and their rivals in the adjacent cubicles would grab their parking spaces and health plans. Nobody wants to use their bodies. That’s precisely the horror with which they live: no one wants to mate with them because in their world, every single striver must fear every other, and the sort of joint action involved in mating and rearing one’s young is impossible—laughable, a thing which only those who have abandoned the hope of A Career can contemplate. So in their minds, mating and rearing children moves down in class, becoming a thing for rednecks and (though they’ll never say this part out loud) immigrants-of-color. The desire to have children gets bounced outside oneself, onto these lesser beings, and returns, courtesy of Atwood, in demonized form, as the tyranny of procreation, family values and the Patriarchy. It’s the horror they love to fear.

>> No.13977040

>>13976983
Based John Dolan but link it next time
http://exiledonline.com/old-exile/vault/books/review103.html

>> No.13977046

>>13976499
Liberal fantasy meme book with no applicable relevance in the real world

>> No.13977054

>>13976972
How do you live life trying to be this meta cognitive about yourself? Just read fucking books jeez, and realize that if this is a retarded rape fantasy, take from it to learn what not to do.

>> No.13977066

>>13977054
I live it cautiously because once the mind is lost, all is lost. The plot of the book is much less harmful than the general thinking mechanisms, logical incoherences, brainlet syntaxes, and last but not least, tepid retard prose that will affect how you write and think. If you do not consider these things, you are a fool.

>> No.13977165

>>13977066
If you're cognizant of these things while you read, its fine. It's how learning works. You see the ways that the execution of ideas, how Atwood sets up stuff, and how it turns out 200 pages later. And you learn how ideas connect later in the text, and understand why it works and why it doesnt.

If you're worried that convincing nonsense is the formula for a broke brain, then you must hate absolutely all literary analysis. It's applying some random theory to a text by an author that 90% of the time literally never though to apply that theory of Marxism or Post-modernism to their work. And any analysis of it only is drawing conclusions about the authors intentions from nonsense. Developing blatantly incorrect theories about what the text was trying to do. But doing stuff like that is still useful, and the people who spend their lives writing those kinds of things, with lots of insight, whether or not what they're reading into exists or not, end up being very good at writing and analyzing themes that actually do run under text.

>> No.13977179

>>13977165
>it's fine because I say it is.

>> No.13977184
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13977184

Anyone read the sequel?

>> No.13977212

>>13977179
I'm giving a mechanism for how reading bad stuff is still useful. The only thing I've been given about how it'll ruin your brain is "Well if the book is bad, it'll make your writing bad right?"

>> No.13977229

>>13976499
A genuine good read

>> No.13977236

>>13976499
It's no Riddley Walker

>> No.13977261

>>13976959
>>13976972
>>13976983
>>13977046
fuck Margaret Atwood FUCK Margaret Atwood FUCK MARGARET ATWOOD FUCK MARGARET ATWOOD

>> No.13977926

>>13976499
An utopían book disguised as a distopian book.

>> No.13977955

>>13977261
This

>> No.13977966

>>13977236
Based
Such an underappreciated book.

>> No.13978403

I like it. I feel like it lives up to stuff like 1984 and Brave New World, as sort of the pillars of modern dystopian fiction.

>> No.13978430

>>13976499
Wine aunt trash.

>> No.13978442

>>13976959
But didn't Atwood herself say it was based on the Iranian Revolution, only masquerading it as Christianity to be more relatable to murrican knowledge?

>> No.13978487

>>13976499
I read this book about a month ago and it sucked.
It's a little girl trying to imitate her dad's dystopian writings.

>> No.13978492

>>13977926
Holy GIGABASED

>> No.13978549

>>13978442
This. It's about the Iranian revolution, it just got twisted into "muh drumpf" in the TV show.

>> No.13978782

I thought it was very boring. The real world politics surrounding it just make it worse because it amplifies some of the nonsensical scenes that Atwood uses to make a moral point. There was a part showing that the maids couldn't even look at the guards without getting in trouble or causing them to go into rape mode but in the same scene there's a Japanese tourist walking around in a minskirt walking around and interacting with people without any issue. Atwood just wanted an outsider to ask the protagonist whether she was happy so she can show that the maids have to lie about it. It's dumb.

>> No.13978786
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13978786

>>13977054
>How do you live life trying to be this meta cognitive about yourself? Just read fucking books jeez

>> No.13979350

An okay ish if sensationalist book that shits the bed in thr last 3rd.

>> No.13979355

it's good. decent dystopian novel with some really interesting narrative methods used. it's reputation has been tarnished however, due to this completely retarded obession with making it "RELEVENT!!!!!1111" to modern day politics. this is partly due to the show which spins the story to be more about epic feminist empowerment, which is fine but it's not what the novel is about at all. it's more about how different people react to a really shitty situation and the various coping mechanisms they come up with. the actual society of gilead, while strung together from various real life regimes, is completely unrealistic on paper and just a backdrop to explore it's themes. apparently the new one critiques the feminist reading of the original although i haven't read it yet.

>> No.13979357

Women’s sexual fantasy thinly disguised as fiction

>> No.13980423

>>13977966
Trubba not anon

>> No.13980433

>>13978442
>>13978549
No shit. Hence why I say it's libel against Christians.

>> No.13982051

>>13979357
This

>> No.13982061

>>13976959
pretty much this.

>> No.13982075

>>13978442
But she's Canadian, so why does she care about pandering to the Americans? What a fucking sellout whore.

>> No.13982161

>>13979355
People are going to look at the story as prime feminist literature no matter what. Even if the new one supposedly critiques it, it’ll still be universally viewed from a feminist angle

>> No.13982191

>>13976499
The greatest utopian novel of the modern age.

>> No.13983589

>>13982191
You type this from your mommy's computer?

>> No.13984643

>>13982161
That's a product of current political climate more than the author. It's similar to how 1984 has been misinterpreted due to it being applied to multiple political contexts over the years.

Atwood is alright in my book. If anyone actually bothered to read her non-fiction, they'd know that she's a second wave feminist who's highly critical of the "woke" fourth wave feminism-- Going so far as to talk about how the MeToo movement is nothing more than a witch hunt due to how the modern justice system works.

>> No.13984737

>>13976972
based

>> No.13984986

>>13979355
>>13984643
Finally a non-braindead poster.

>> No.13985677

>>13984986
Cuck