Opinion piece: Atwood's work is useful in society.

Hello to all the hes, shes theys and zies. I wanted to do an opinion piece on how and why I think Atwood's work can be useful to us in society. Take her 1985 classic The Handmaid's Tale, when Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president, the novel rose in the bestseller charts as the handmaids were seen as figures of resistance against Trump's regimes targeting women. This tells us something about her work. Notice how Trump became president in 2017 until 2021, and his presidency caused a rise of interest in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Then two years later The Testaments (2019) was published, winning the Booker prize.

There must have been a clear interest in a sequel all of a sudden because The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985. It took thirty-four years until we arrived at the sequel. Though her book also rose in prominence again, I think because of the book banning in the United States of America. Some people saw her book as "bad" or "anti-Christian". Having read both The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, I consider that Atwood has given us a problem in society, then later decided to give us a solution. The Testaments could be perceived as a book of hope or confidence. It might only be fiction but it teaches us that even the strongest of rulers or dictatorships can be overthrown.

Her work also indicates that both sides of the coin can be established. Take Oryx and Crake (2003), having read some of the book (which I plan to finish), there are some people who agree with what OrganInc farm does and some who disagree. Atwood can thus highlight both sides to an argument, effectively getting her point across in a meaningful way.

Meanwhile in Atwood's short story collection Wilderness Tips (1991) we discover fragments of society with a range of characters from the cheeky to the weird to the disgusting. Here each short story offers something different which Atwood gets the reader thinking about by her style of writing.

But for Cats Eye (1988) she challenges guilt which is as relevant to society now as it was back then.

Margaret Atwood's work to me is useful in society because I believe it can offer answers to questions or problems in society that otherwise possibly would have been ignored. She seems to interrogate society through her work, whether that was her intention or not. For that I applaud her.




Until next time,


Thomas.

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