What's up Hive? And hello to the members of the Hive Book Club Community! It's been a while since I posted a Book Review and the last one I wrote was How to Find Meaning in Suffering: Practical Tips Inspired by Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. It wasn't a book review as much as my distillation of the important learning that you can take from the book. The idea of finding meaning in suffering resonated with me.
In this post, again it won't be a typical book review where I talk about the characters and the plot. Instead, I'll be sharing the highlights of the book in terms of the thought-provoking ideas that I got while reading it. I've been practicing speeding but at certain times, I turn it off to capture meaningful and striking quotes from a book. While reading The Handmaid's Tale, I highlighted a few lines that struck me.
The story is about a dystopian world where the fertility rate of women has become so low and it led to a society (Gilead) taking very extreme and bizarre actions. The book is the first part of a series and it has also been adapted into a TV show. I read the book before watching the show and I've only watched the first two episodes. I think the TV show captured how in the book the main character takes you into her mind and her deep, sometimes incoherent, thoughts.
I will my best not to give away any major spoilers about the book or the TV show in this post.
WOULD YOU KILL TO GIVE BIRTH?
One of the premises of the book is how the world morphed into a dystopian society where women (Aunts) brainwash other women into making them handmaids (women passed around and made to carry the children of married Commanders). In a world where only a few women could give birth, it's ironic how the people in Gilead (the society) regarded fertile women as mere vessels or tools for procreation. They weren't valued and some were even abused and killed. And so the question, "Would you kill to give birth?"
"Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach split open and her intestines pulled out."
The quote above is a horrific description of what the handmaids were shown while they were being subdued or brainwashed. I found it hard to believe that people would resort to torture and coercion to ensure the continuity of our species. Although there were other issues and elements in the story (think twisted religious terrorism and cruel patriarchy), it's hard to imagine the human race sliding backward to an oppressive version of a world because of low fertility. I get why the story of Gilead is so interesting because of it.
"Partly I was jealous of her; but how could I be jealous of a woman obviously dried-up and unhappy? You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. Nevertheless I was jealous."
I completely agree with the part of the above quote saying how a fertile woman could be jealous of a barren woman. Fertile women in a barren society should have been placed on pedestals and considered valuable and important. But the quote says that the main character was, nevertheless, jealous. She was jealous because she did not have freedom.
I think the human race would go to extreme lengths to ensure we would live on but I don't think it would justify killing and enslaving people, much more the women vital to our perpetuity.
IGNORING REQUIRES A LOT OF WORK
We ignore issues and problems because it's easier that way, right? Facing our problems and challenges are difficult that's why a lot of people choose not to. But the book presents the idea that ignoring requires a lot of work. Considering the context, I understood what it meant and how it can be true in our world.
"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard."
The quotes above capture the idea. Ignoring is not the same as ignorance. Ignoring requires a lot of work. But how come? It shouldn't be that hard, right?
If you live in a country or society plagued with major problems such as injustice, crime, poverty, and corruption, you would understand this. If you were out on the street seeing a drug deal or a crime happening right in front of your eyes, would you not be gripped by the feeling of helplessness and shame as you choose to ignore what's happening? It takes a lot of work to shut our conscience, close our eyes, and look away.
PAIN IS EASY TO FORGET
Pain is a signal to our minds that something might be wrong with us. For such a functional tool, it's very unwelcome. The book can be graphic and violent at times and as the main character navigates her cruel world, she asserts that pain is easy to forget.
"But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind."
The quote above I think is true for most physical pain. You get hurt, pain shoots, and it can feel like it would last forever. But the pain subsides and it slowly disappears. Before you know it, it's gone. And you may have a description of the pain, but you could never recall it, never relive it.
But a lot of times, pain leaves something behind in our subconscious. And as Freud argues, we can't easily access our subconscious but it plays a major role in our lives. Pain can either traumatize us or it can strengthen us.
"That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done..."
The idea now extends to love. Is it easy to forget, just like pain? The quote above mentions "that kind of love." The kind of love we can give is limited and not all of it is equal. If you've fallen in love before and moved on from it, you'd understand how a certain love becomes hard to remember. Why did I love that person again? You would just wonder.
BEHAVING OVER FEELING
This idea is not really thought-provoking since it's common sense. But sometimes what seems to be common turns out to be otherwise. Ever since I've started my journey of Personal Development, the one idea that grounds me is that I have been given the ultimate gift of free will and I can exercise that free will by choosing how to react to the things that come my way.
"You can’t help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave."
And so the quote above. Easier said than done, right? I think if everyone knew how to keep their feelings in check, there would be fewer disagreements in the world. But we must still strive to rise above our feelings. Again, we exercise our free will by choosing how to behave especially when we are in dire and stressful situations. This, of course, extends to extremely happy situations since a lot of people take foolish decisions when they're happy.
There are characters in the book that show immense resilience and I think resilience stems from a person's ability to process the situation she's in and the emotions she's feeling, and still choosing to do the right thing.
"You can think clearly only with your clothes on."
The quote above is a joke from one of the characters. But it reflects the power of our feelings over our behavior. We get "lost in the moment" because we let our feelings get the better of us. A lot of times, when we let our feelings guide us, we gravitate towards the pleasurable and the easy. We settle for the comfortable and choose to go to our default modes. Personal growth only happens when we consciously face our hardships and when we choose behaving over feeling.
Reading Experience (Community Contest)
I know this post is quite loaded with a lot of ideas and I hope I was able to stir up your minds while reading it. I didn't go into the plot and the characters because I know you can easily look that up on Google.
With this, I would like to share more of my experience as a book reader. I will be answering the questions below to join the Hive Book Club's Community Contest #3 All About Readers.
What is your favorite time or place to read?
I read every morning (in my room). I wake up at 5 AM and part of my morning routine is to read a book for at least 30 minutes. I think it's the best time to read because there are no distractions and I can pour myself into the book I'm reading. I also sometimes read during lunchtime at the office. Whenever I'm almost finished with a book, I tend to read throughout different times of the day because I get excited to finally finish the book.
What makes you enjoy a book?
For non-fiction or biography books, I enjoy the ones that are packed with lessons and new learning. For fiction books, I like to read thought-provoking and exciting stories.
Do you like to read outdoors, before bed, or on the bus on your way to work?
I used to read during my commutes and there are times when I miss my stops before I get absorbed with the book I'm reading. Now that I have a motorcycle, I mostly read in my room or at the office.
Do you focus on character development, thoughtful messages, or the level of intrigue a plot generates in you?
When I was younger, I get really hooked by intriguing plots but now, I focus on thoughtful messages. I don't read a lot of fiction books lately and I tend to be forgiving when it comes to character development. For non-fiction books though, there are a lot of times that I flatly disagree with the ideas that the author presents or how he presents them.
As one of the rules of the contest, I am tagging 
That's it! This post turned out to be quite long and so I will end here. One of the joys I (re)discovered this year is Reading. I'll be sharing with you how I got into reading quite a number of books this year versus the recent past years combined. So see you in the next post. Cheers!
Images were created using Canva.com. Image of book cover obtained from Kobo.com.
