So because the season ended and I had to see how the story ended, I started reading the book the other day. I was also skeptical of how accurately the book was being portrayed in the series. I don't know if anyone has read Ender's Game, but the book is very different than the movie. One big difference is that Ender is six years old in the book and is frequently described as sleeping naked on several occasions in a way that is very creepy. Not hard to wonder why they didn't include that in the movie.
Anyways, the book is different in some way that confuse me. For one, the commander's wife is a famous singer named Serena Joy in the book. She is like a Beyonce type. In the show, she is somewhat unknown, aspiring book author who works with the commander to write the new law of Gilead. I can't understand why this was changed outside of the show having a modern feminist agenda. It reminds me of the comments that conservative woman are getting about internalizing misogyny. This and the possibility that they are deflecting the possibility that people with power would do something like this. In the show, they are wealthy people, but they are unknown wealthy people. In the book, the commander's wife is a celebrity.
The second thing that the show leaves out that is included in the book is that there is a war taking place in other parts of the country. The book says that war taking place in California is why there aren't many oranges. This is not why oranges are special in the show. The book really seems much more like a war against the elite than the show does.
Another thing that is different is that the main character repeatedly remembers her mother when she is having flashbacks. This would be hard to integrate into the story because the setting is changed from the 80's to present day and the character of her mother is set in the time period of the women's movement of the 70's. So, this would have been hard to integrate. The mother was a strong feminist who was criticized for having a child in her 30's by other feminists of the time who believed that she was sacrificing her freedom for the more traditional role of a mother. This is interesting to me because it is hard to tell so far whether the author is for or against the women's movement herself.
I think the conclusion is subject to the reader's perspective on the women's movement. It is easy to see that someone who supported the movement would be in favor of the theory that the author was clearly showing what a horrible thing it would be to lose rights for women. Clearly, this is what the show is trying to indicate with the recent events and propaganda about how Trump is going to undo these rights by his very presence in the White House.
However, it is also possible to see that this world is actually the fantasy of the author when reading the book. Maybe even that she sees herself as one of the commander's wives by some of the things she suggests.
For instance, on page 117 she says that Aunt Lydia shows the girl's very graphic snuff films. This is supposed to indoctrinate them that this is the way women were treated before they were rescued by this new order.
On page 105, the main character says, "I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to."
In the time this was written, this would mean nothing. This would mean fiction. Today, this means that it is possible that this book is actually the fantasy of the author rather than the warning of a regression of rights for women, in my opinion.
