Last week, my students, colleagues, and I found out the results of the 2024 US election in real time between the mundane lessons, tests, and meetings of a typical school day. I’m an English teacher in Singapore, which means that our daytime is the US nighttime, so we processed the unfolding reality together, an ocean away from our country.
For students in my AP English Language and Composition class, the juxtaposition between the news and our current unit– a study of argumentation and Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale– made it clear why reading literature is so essential during fraught times like these.
As the election results rolled in, one screen refresh after another, my students and I discussed the ending of the novel, which is set in a theocratic version of the United States in which fertile women are forced to conceive children for the men in power. I asked my students to name one argument Atwood seems to be making— what is one message her work communicates about society or human nature?
One student, who I’ll call Naira, noticed the absurdity of the final lines of the novel, in which a far-future historian of Gilead concludes her presentation on the origin of The Handmaid’s Tale manuscript with the mundane line “Any questions?” Naira pointed out the contrast between the conference’s prosaic, academic tone and the visceral gut-punch that is the rest of the novel, Offred’s firsthand account of a violent coup, the government’s brutal violence, and her state-sanctioned rape: “That easygoing tone… it’s the same one we use when we talk about events we learn about in history class,” explained Naira, “Atwood is warning us not to take history lightly.”
Another student, Joyce, shared, “History comes in cycles… Gilead was super strict, but it eventually collapsed because people always seek freedom.”
They’re right– Atwood’s novel illustrates, in snippets of memory of the “before times” interspersed with scenes of Offred’s life in Gilead, that we are naive to ignore both the lessons of history and warning signs in the present. In her introduction to the novel, Atwood explains that she based each horror that plays out in Gilead on a real event from the past– the book may be speculative, but the dehumanization, the othering, the abuse of power are all true to history. And the Historical Notes at the end of the novel reveal that though the Gileadean leaders’ grip on power seemed ironclad, Gilead fell, much like authoritarian states in our own world have eventually fallen. In other words, The Handmaid’s Tale is a warning of the world that might unfold if we give in to complacency and ignorance, but it is also a reminder of our own resilience; the novel gives us, like Offred at the end of the novel, the choice to step “into the darkness within, or else the light.”
Though it was hard to discuss Gilead on a day when we feared what the next four years of right-wing, misogynistic leadership might bring, it was also fitting. We turned to Offred and we turned to each other; literature and its lessons felt like a balm on a fresh wound.
Eight years ago, on November 9, 2016, I wasn’t feeling nearly as stoic. The morning after election day, I remember waking up in the pre-dawn Boston dark and writing in my journal in an effort to process the previous day’s election. That morning, I felt such a surge of rage and grief that writing was the only way I could keep myself from crying. Back then, I was shocked by the election results.
This year, though, as much as I hoped that Trump wouldn’t win, I expected that he would– I had learned from history. I felt numb all day this time, nervous anticipation turning into a knot of dread in my stomach around 10 pm Eastern time; I only cried on my bus commute home when I read a kind text from a dear colleague.
As the 2024 election recedes in our memory, I want to hold on to what it felt like to teach The Handmaid’s Tale on the day we learned the results. My students and I were nervous, but reading Atwood’s words together helped us see that it is human nature to resist and that by paying attention to history, we can stay vigilant.
Another brilliant author, Louise Erdrich writes:
“A well-functioning democracy reminds me of a Leonard Cohen quote: ‘If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’ When democracy is burning well, poetry and literature and independent bookstores are the ash. We are beautifully there but not desperately there. We get taken for granted. People love us, but don’t seek us out with the sort of intensity that occurs when democracy is visibly, viscerally faltering. When democracy is not burning well, poetry burns harder.”
In good times, books are lovely, but they aren’t essential. It’s only when the floor falls out from under us and we can’t make sense of things do we hunger for poems and stories.
We’re entering an uncertain, dark time under the new administration, but for the sake of my students and everyone I love, I hope we can hold onto the light and wisdom that literature offers. I hope we can remember the lessons of history and the strength of those who came before us. I hope we can take good care of each other and remember that in times of darkness, our creativity, compassion, and resolve must burn harder.
Leaf Elhai 