The Commander is a high-ranking official in Gilead. Offred describes the structure of Gilead's society, including the several different classes of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy. Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Offred describes her life during her third assignment as a Handmaid, in this case to Commander Fred who is formally referred to as The Commander.
The character is one of a class of women known as Handmaids who are kept for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era of declining births due to sterility from pollution and sexually transmitted diseases. The story is told in the first person by a woman called Offred (literally "Of-Fred"). In this society, human rights are severely limited and women's rights are unrecognized as almost all women are forbidden to read. The new regime, the Republic of Gilead, moves quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsory regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. They are quickly able to eliminate all women's rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. "Let's hope we don't reach the stage of wholesale book burnings, as in Fahrenheit 451," says Atwood, "But if we do, let's hope some books will prove unburnable - that they will travel underground, as prohibited books did in the Soviet Union.The Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America.īeginning with a staged attack that kills the President and most of Congress, an extreme Christian movement calling itself the " Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order.
A spokesperson says it "feels like a regular book" even though it's made of fireproof material.Īccording to the book's designers, the special edition is printed on heat-resistant aluminum material, bound with nickel wire and stainless steel used in aerospace manufacturing, and printed with ink that won't be destroyed or degraded even when exposed to a temperature of 2200☏. Sotheby's estimates The Unburnable Book will fetch $100,000 at auction. We are thankful to be able to deploy the proceeds of this auction to fortify this unprecedented fight for books." "In the face of a determined effort to censor and silence," says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, "this unburnable book is an emblem of our collective resolve to protect books, stories and ideas from those who fear and revile them.
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