It could never happen to us...

Part of what struck me from last night's reading was the ease at which society was completely transformed. America morphed from a modern, democratic society to a theocracy run by extremists, with puritanical views on religion, sex and politics. Whenever we view an event in the news regarding rebellion or genocide - a society totally overrun - we take comfort in the fact that we live in a wealthy, developed country. We have rights, we have a constitution, we have freedom, we have equality. We can feel the distance between us and the havoc being wreaked on opposite corners of the world. What's happening there could never happen to us, we say, shaking our heads at the TV screen and newspapers in front of us. But in Gilead (The Handmaid's Tale) it did.

Offred describes the events that led to the transition. The president was assassinated, congress slaughtered, and a new religious extremist regime took over. She remembers the way she was feeling:

"I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?" (Atwood, 183).

The events that Offred describes terrify me, as they seem so real. It's frightening to think that could happen the America that we know today. She recalls the green paper money that people used as a distant memory, a thing of the past, back when women held jobs.

After the new government takes over, women are stripped of all money and property rights. The equality that women fought so long and hard for vanished right before their eyes. This is also a frightening thought. Today, men and women are more or less considered equals, and if someone suggested to strip one gender of their rights, they would be scorned or even ostracized. In spite of that, Offred doesn't feel as though Luke (her husband back when she still had a normal life and real name) comprehends the gravity of her situation.

"We still have... he said. But he didn't go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn't be saying we since nothing that I knew of had been taken away from him,"(Atwood, 191).

It seems as though women are loosing their liberty, one step at a time. First, the freedom to hold jobs, then the freedom to hold property, then the freedom to travel as they pleased, and eventually even the freedom over their own bodies.

In fact, later, Moira describes using the restroom as the "one freedom" that women still possess, and Offred describes the process as being "democratic." It's disturbing that in Gilead, women have become so stripped of their rights the bathroom has become almost a symbol of independence.