Republic of Gilead

She almost made it, then they caught her.

Gilead gave her two choices: Shovel toxic waste in the colonies until her skin peels off, or work nights at Jezebel's.

She took Jezebel's, face cream, drinks, and a whole building full of the same commanders who outlawed lipstick.

Dan spent the whole book waiting for Moira to come back and save the day.

Which brings us to a transition in her life that is deeply foundational for her most famous work.

We have to look at her university years, the endless barrage of academic mansplaining, and how all of this planted the seeds for the Republic of Gilead.

Gilead.Her academic journey represents a massive intellectual and cultural leap from catching bugs in the Canadian bush.

She starts at the University of Toronto, which at the time was a formidable institution.

Very prestigious.

That is such a fascinating detail.

Hearing her casually assemble these terrifying pieces in the audio without any of the promotional Hollywood brightness that has surrounded the television adaptation feels entirely new and grounded.

There's an anecdote she shares about the drafting process of Gilead that perfectly captures her grounded, almost cynical view of the publishing industry.

Her neighbors hanged her, and she survived, which must have made the next Sunday at church very awkward.

Atwood built Gilead on that Puritan world.

And in 1660, the Puritans in Boston hanged a Quaker named Mary Dyer for walking back into town after they told her to stay out.

So the Quakers in this book are the Puritans' real victims.

She didn't escape.

She's not out of the country, right? I'm so confused.

Well, I mean, she's still in Gilead, but last episode she seemed way happier than the Handmaid.

She's got all her buddies there in the, uh, Commander's private little sex club.

Like, is she making the bigger picture? Like, the only way we're all getting out of this dystopian situation is, like, in a casket? Is when we die and they throw us in a black van and they get rid of our bodies somewhere? Or is she literally saying there's a black van that's going to pick them all up and they go home? Because I was under the impression that Nick was waiting.

In Gilead, the black vans belong to the eyes, the secret police, the ones with the winged eye painted on the side.

When a black van pulls up, somebody gets taken.

So when Moira says nobody gets out of here except in a black van, she means nobody leaves on their own.

Then there are the complaints that not a whole lot happens in the story.

Some people can't stand Margaret Atwood personally for some of the things she's said, not to mention the people who are simply exhausted by The Handmaid's Tale and everyone comparing everything to Gilead.

However, what you hardly find anywhere, and please, if I've just not searched hard enough, correct me in the comments, are many complaints about the writing.

The writing is the book.

There's also something else happening here with time.

The novel doesn't stay neatly in one tense.

Offred tells us what's happening around her now, but she's constantly pulled backwards into memories of the world before Gilead.

Written this way, the past isn't just background information, it's constantly colliding with the present.

go.

All right, so there's civil war, and we have split off and become the Republic of Gilead, at least where we are in the story.

And they have taken all rights away from women, all money.

Everyone is either owned by someone or has a very specific job, and they have to wear color-coded outfits, and they can't read.

Undine, you said this just a minute ago.

You said she's not sure if she remembers things correctly because she's literally being written over to be a handmaid and to believe all of the stuff that the handmaids are supposed to do.

And because of the timing of this, every single person in this experiment is a palimpsest you're right they're trying to be written over so that speaks to me both of transformation and control they're being controlled and they are being transformed into this the founders of Gilead's like ideal of what society is supposed to be like

Yeah.

A truly harrowing book

It outlines Gilead, which is a totalitarian theocracy.

Women's lives and reproductive roles are rigidly, violently controlled, and there's this quote, "Better never means better for everyone.

It always means worse for some."

Yeah, and the horror of Atwood's work is that it isn't wildly speculative.

She famously emphasized that she didn't include anything in Gilead that hadn't already happened in human history.

Right.

It's all based on precedent.

So your analogy actually works, Dan.

Gilead runs prevaganzas at different scales.

The big flashy ones with the commanders get the spotlight.

And there's a SMAR, local tier version, district over national, Pop Warner versus NFL.

And we never know her true name because it's been erased by the government.

The regime that she finds herself in is called the Republic of Gilead, and it's a totalitarian government that enforces rigid social rules and enslaves the few remaining fertile women as handmaids.

And They are expected to produce children for high-ranking government officials or others whose status is high enough for that privilege.

And since Offred was there at the start of the takeover, we see how Gilead's government is attempting to reshape society.

So that's what we get a lot of throughout the book, sort of how things are different now than they had been.

So kind of a transformation.

She also started writing this book while she was in Germany, in Berlin, I believe it was.

And during the time that she was there, she had an opportunity to travel around to some of the former Soviet bloc countries.