The Handmaid's Tale

I am a living book, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Like Fahrenheit 451 I am a dystopian novel set in a future that most people will not believe can happen. However, the point is that it can.
A books most basic purpose is to make us think and question. Reading is a privilege that enables us to access the ideas that others have so that we may think about them.
In The Handmaid's Tale Atwood shows us a world where women are broken down into groups based on function. They have no rights, can not read, and must only do things related to that function. Clothing is a long habit intended to hide them and keep them hidden from the world. It is presented as giving them freedom from the eyes of men, but it is really to make them invisible. The Habit is color-coded based on a woman's status/function in society. Handmaids wear red. They have the lowest rank. Wives wear blue and have the highest status, despite the fact that they are infertile.
The hardest hit in this are the Handmaids. They are the women who remain fertile despite the things that have caused infertility in the rest of the population. Clothed in red, they no longer have names and are called by a patronymic name that refers to the man they belong to at the moment. After they produce a child they are moved on to the next Commander to provide him and his wife with a child.
For me, this book is a warning to people not to take anything for granted. The country Offred, the handmaid telling the story, inhabits used to be the United States. People began to get frustrated with the freedoms others had that they did not approve of, especially freedom women were gaining, and overthrew the government and set up their own religiously guided government that purported to be Christian in theology. However, amongst the issues they faced was resistance from Christian denominations who worked in the underground.
One of the things that this story highlights is the hypocrisy of the people who are supposedly right and moral enough to lead....for example, a Handmaid is only to be impregnated during a 'ceremony' involving the Commander and his wife. However, in the desperation to have a child and gain more status the wives encourage handmaids to find other ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLLJtoGLJE&feature=related
As the story is told you see more and more how things were taken away, but that some thins can not be stolen from people, they have to give them up. Things like courage, conviction, and hope. Despite her situation, Offred continues to wonder how she will escape and live again. She chooses to remember what life was like in the time before, when she could read, choose her clothes, and wear what she call "her shining name".
I would choose to be this book because too many people are complacent about how things are. Until it affects them personally too many people laugh off the actions of others. Unfortunately, if they find enough people who agree with them and not enough stand up for them, many of the things we take for granted will go down the drain.