When The Past Comes Back To Haunt You

My choice for the challenge "A book that scares you" is Margaret Atwoods Ustopian novel, Handmaid's Tale. This might seem like an interesting choice for those of you who have either heard of the book or have read it, given how tame it can see. The novel is an ustopian (Atwood's term for a dytopian/utopian world where it just depends on who you are) version of the future, where the bible is perverted to allow an ostensible theocratic government to come to power. While in and off itself is scary because the general premise comes from Genesis 30:1-3. 

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” 2 Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” 3 Then she said, “Here is my servantBilhah; go in to her, so that she may give birth on my behalf,[a] that even I may have children[b] through her.”

The other ideologies in the book are borrowed from different points in American or global history, some of which continue today. There are mass marriages of children, twisted family life, a total ban on pornography, woman must be totally covered at all time, seen and rarely heard. It is the origins of the ideologies in the book that are scary, because this book is merely a thought experiment, and satire, of what would happen when some or all are taken to the extreme. I had to read this book for my speculative fiction class and it was used to demonstrate and analyze the power of ideologies and how quickly they can change. In that regard it was a great book, and while it was not my all time favorite, I absolutely appreciate the brilliance that is Margaret Atwood and believe that it was a great edition to the curriculum.