Intrigued by a reference in Merold Westphal's Suspicion and Faith, I've just finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet and essayist, critically lauded and much decorated. This is my first encounter with her writing but I don't think it will be long before I read more. The Handmaid's Tale is a work of social satire. Satire operates by highlighting and exaggerating absurd or problematic aspects of an idea, worldview or public personality in order to debunk it or turn it into an object of ridicule. By far the most common application of this technique is to make us laugh, but laughter is never the main aim. The main aim is to deflate pretensions, to open up the space for criticism, to bring the powerful or popular down a peg or two. Less commonly, because it takes much more skill, satire can aim to horrify, to make us weep. The classic example is George Orwell's 1984, a grim comment on th
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson