The Handmaid's Tale (WARNING: possible spoiler alert)

The Handmaid's Tale was an awesome book. Even so, it was an upsetting book to read. The whole idea that women were basically like breeding sows was repulsive. I hated the idea that they had no choice. They were supposedly protected, but protected from what? All the men were so whipped it would have been hard for them to do anything. (Then again, with the way things were, the men might have gotten even more dangerous. At least the women were protected in some ways from the desperate needs of men; they weren't sex toys. ) Expecting them all to be baby mamas and then punishing them if they weren't was preposterous. And what was the point of having a wife? They were a religious "republic"; wouldn't it seem more reasonable to have a Handmaid as a wife and punish the Wives for being barren? Wasn't having a Handmaid just another form of adultery? And the need to hide the women's bodies, their faces - like when Offred went in for her doctor's appointment and during the Ceremony - it was like they weren't real people. You should look someone in the eye when you plan on taking their liberty away. Otherwise you're a coward. The whole idea behind it was cowardly - hiding their faces behind those white wings they had to wear. It was a cowardly society, a desperate society based on the need to reproduce. They became barbaric, animal -like almost.
The writing was powerful. The images were vivid. The story was beautifully sad. I really did like it, but sometimes I had to put it down just because it made me angry to keep reading it. But that's the mark of a good writer: to be able to invoke emotion into one's readers. And she definitely did that.