The Handmaid's Tale, Gilead, prophecy and hope
This week I started, and finished, Season 5 of The Handmaid’s Tale. While I love this story, it has felt like an ice-cold immersion into trauma. It is so deftly and deeply written, my own fears, traumas and disassociation have no place to hide as the lives of the characters tear through me. But this week, Season 5 felt like a path through the darkness.
Don’t get me wrong, the trauma is real. But for those of you that never got passed Season 1, I implore you to step forward. Because by Season 3, the lifeline drums a steady beat of resistance that I swear you will feel in your bones. By Season 5, the resistance has morphed and spread. It has also hit a few roadblocks you would not expect, but feel so eerily familiar in this time - it feels like a path is being shown.
Canadians no longer welcome American refugees. The cries are loud; the actions are violent. It’s been years. The Americans, the Gilead escapees, keep coming. Americans have no home.
Watching this now, three years after Season 5 ended, is chilling, when there are currently multiple news reports of Canadians effectively and efficiently boycotting American goods, and boycotting American holidays. Canadians aren’t violently angry in our current timeline, but the idea of “Americans not being welcome”, would have been strange if I watched this three years ago. Now, it feels like prophecy.
This is the reason I love science-fiction and fantasy. It is the reason I am a sci-fi writer. We get to ask questions and follow them to their conclusion. This is a paraphrase of how Octavia Butler described her simple, but powerful process, which led her to write The Parable of The Sower, published in 1993 (which included rampant fires in LA in the year 2025). This is why Margaret Atwood was this mild-mannered, shattering genius, when The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, and still is.
“America is dying. It’s an idea that has outlived its usefulness. Everything you value. All the things you are clinging too: democracy, liberty, justice - all that feel-good crap defined by a bunch slave owners talking about how all men are created equal. All of that collapsed under the weight of late-term capitalism and rampant consumerism. It broke our pretty little planet, and almost ended the human race.”
This quote is from a Commander in Gilead. I had to stop the show and rewind. I sat quietly in the dark. Mind-blown. Heart-rending. Prophecy?
I am scared to even write this, even though the writing is on the wall, the screen — all of our screens. Listen, America will keep on existing. But like Britain and Italy, whose Empires stopped existing, they are not the same. Their languages and cultures are still thriving. This is not the end of everything, but it is the end of something. And it is wild - WILD - even to me - that this sci-fi tv show has done this to me.
This show has had the luxury to build a story over seasons. The character arcs are stunning, but feel grounded from episode to episode and season to season. It does not feel like they have “jumped the shark”, but made a lived reality out of story. Next season is the last, and I am glad the writers have come up with an ending for this epic journey. Little did they know their Season 6 would be in the current timeline of 2025. I wonder how it will play in our current atmosphere.
Watch The Handmaid’s Tale. Before - it was the realization of our fears, a trauma-dump we were hoping to avoid, push-down, and avert. Now that our fears are here, it is a brutal path for our resistance and hope.
Love your insights, Zoe!