blackaby wrote:
When a novel is classified as literature, and is studied by universities and schools, I think you'd probably be selling it short not to consider the prevailing themes and attitudes within it, and what message it gives to readers.
Well, yeah. Definitely. But a lot of those lessons you objected to can be found in Faulkner. A book isn't bad because the characters in it betray their best friends.
blackaby wrote:
Personally I was amazed, considering its content, how utterly and incredibly boring that book was. It would be as if someone else had written Jurrassic park and instead of the dinosaurs going out on a rampage, they all sat around whining about how they didn't have anything to file their nails on and it was so much better in the old days.
Well, I didn't find it boring. But that's rather subjective. There's a lot of celebrated literature out there that can be described as boring, far more boring than Handmaid's Tale, independent of its subject matter. As for the "whining," well of course it was much better in the old days. It's a book about a distopia. That's gonna come up a lot. Matters involving emory boards and using butter as face moisturizer certainly weren't major concerns, just the little things that are more tangible in the day-to-day that also sucked. Plenty of time was given to public mob execution, torn bodies hanging from the university wall, and bizarre and degrading sex rituals, but the little things added texture, at least for me.
blackaby wrote:
I wouldn't call it kindness, because I don't think Offred actually possessed a personality of any description and any emotion would be somewhat beyond her. However if you consider everything short of stabbing people with a stick kindness, then I think they got of rather sweetly when she chose instead to bitch in her incredibly boring way about how they were unattractive and old and pathetic.
Um, I did put a condition on the "kindness" comment. Anyone who goes through what Offred did and is a bouncy ball of sunshine is a person of pure evil. It would've been understandable if she did worse.
But whatever. You didn't like the book. I did. Awesome. I think everyone's heard enough of Yeahduff's opinions on stuff for the rest of the year, so if you wanna continue making snarky comments about the book, go ahead, I won't stop you. It might be more worth it to talk about a book you did like, though. Later.
