The witnesses
The Witnesses (Original title: The Testaments ) is a novel by Margaret Atwood from 2019 . It is a continuation of the novel The Handmaid's Tale ( The Handmaid's Tale ) in 1985. From the perspective of three women standing in different ways in connection to the main character of the previous book, Atwood tells three life stories during the period of decline of the fictitious State Gilead. She also included elements from the television series The Handmaid's Tale, which has been broadcast since 2017 .
action
The plot begins about 15 years after the end of the previous book, which ends with the protagonist's flight, but leaves many questions about her future fate unanswered. The novel is told in three storylines that converge towards the end of the book. It is told throughout from a first-person perspective and, like The Maid's Report , is composed of fictitious documents: Aunt Lydia's autobiographical notes and the testimony of two young women who escaped from Gilead, who are referred to as Witnesses 369A and 369B, respectively.
Aunt Lydia
In her report, Aunt Lydia describes how she experienced the upheaval that led to the founding of Gilead. Submissive through torture, she agrees to set up the system of "aunts" who, as a kind of moral guardian, control the lives of the women of Gilead. In the beginning she proceeded with great cruelty and earned the trust of the Gilead elite. Over time, she expands her own position of power to such an extent that there is new scope for her. Among other things, she collects documents about the crimes of the inhuman and corrupt government of Gilead and thus ultimately makes a significant contribution to the overthrow of the dictatorship, which she no longer experiences herself: Due to her deep involvement in the system, she assumes either as an important witness murdered by Gilead's government, or severely punished by its successor state for their collaboration, and aversed this by her suicide.
Aunt Lydia's perspective gives deeper insights into the political processes within Gilead, which were closed to the protagonist from The Maid's Report . In her report she reflects on her complex role between collaboration and resistance in an injustice state that she helped to shape.
Agnes Jemima / Aunt Victoria / Witness 369A
Agnes grew up with an elite family in Gilead. Only after her mother's death does she find out that she was not her birth mother, but that she snatched the child from a handmaid . Her birth mother is the protagonist of the book The Maid's Report . Agnes Jemima is thus identical to the character known as Hannah from the television series , who was born before Gilead was founded, but was too young to remember clearly. In order to avoid a forced marriage, Agnes Jemima applies for training as an aunt with the support of Aunt Lydia and becomes a candidate for this position under the name Aunt Victoria.
In her narration, Agnes reflects on how a repressive system for those who live in it represents normality, and states that, despite the oppression experienced there, she experiences Gilead's end as a loss.
Daisy / Nichole / Jade / Witness 369B
Daisy grows up with foster parents in Toronto , unaware that she was born in Gilead and smuggled into Canada as a baby by the Mayday resistance movement . Your foster parents run a second-hand shop that acts as a message hub for the movement. Daisy is increasingly interested in the injustices in neighboring Gilead and begins to get involved in politics. When her foster parents are murdered on behalf of the Gilead government, Daisy has to flee. Members of Mayday inform them about their origins. She learns that she is the famous child named Nichole, whose extradition Gilead continues to demand and who has become a central element of government propaganda for Gilead and a symbol of protest against Gilead in other countries. Mayday is in contact with an influential person in Gilead, initially unknown by name. With her help, Nichole poses as Jade, a girl who wants to convert to Gilead's state religion, only to actually infiltrate the state to exchange messages. The contact person in Gilead turns out to be Aunt Lydia, who brings Nichole together with her half-sister Agnes and enables them both to escape from Gilead together. She entrusts them with the evidence she has gathered. It is slated to be released in Canada and has the potential to destabilize Gilead so that the state cannot continue to exist.
Nichole, a girl who grew up in a liberal democracy, offers an outside perspective of Gilead and a counter-image to her half-sister Agnes, who was influenced by the strict upbringing in Gilead.
Historical epilogue
Like The Maid's Report , The Witnesses also ends with metafictional minutes of a scientific conference. As in the previous book, Professor Pieixoto, a leading expert on the Gilead studies, classifies the autobiographical report and the statements of the two young witnesses critically . He also consults archaeological sources, including a memorial that Agnes and Nichole erected in memory of their friend Becka who remained in Gilead and whose inscription mentions their mother, fathers, children and grandchildren. From this it can be concluded that the two young main characters have found their mother and father in Canada again.
According to the epilogue, the present version of The Witnesses is a facsimile of the three reports that Professor Pieixoto and his scientific team arranged in a narrative order.
background
In her afterword, Margaret Atwood writes that the ideas for this book arose in part from speculation by fans of the first book. Atwood's answers to questions posed to her as an author have changed over the years, with some of the opportunities for political development presented in The Maid's Report have since become a reality. She believes the populations of many countries, including the United States, were under more pressure at the time this book was published than they were at the time she wrote The Maid's Report .
A question that was asked particularly frequently was how Gilead's rule was brought down. This book is your answer to that. In general, Atwood notes that totalitarian states can collapse internally, based on a promise they cannot keep, and overthrown by outside pressure, or a combination of both. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as historical events are seldom inevitable.
Relationship to the television series
The television series The Handmaid's Tale, which has been broadcast since 2017, filmed the plot of the book of the same name in the first season, after which the story was freely developed. Margaret Atwood was consulted on the show's development to make sure it didn't run counter to her expectations. For example, Atwood insisted that the main character's daughter must survive because she wanted to tell the story of Nichole's life. Conversely, Atwood took into account the plot elements established in the series. In a flashback, the series showed Aunt Lydia's earlier life as a primary school teacher. In The Witnesses , Aunt Lydia was a family judge before Gilead, but Atwood added that she had worked as a teacher for several years.
In an interview, Atwood said that Aunt Lydia's character creation in the sequel was shaped by Ann Dowd's portrayal in the television series. In the audio book version of the book, Dowd reads the parts of the text told from Aunt Lydia's point of view.
The historical epilogue humorously references the television series by mentioning that Professor Pieixoto was involved in a television series called Inside Gilead - Daily Life in a Puritan Theocracy . The epilogue also mentions that Gilead studies, which have long been a niche discipline, have become popular in recent years and that Gilead reenactment has also become popular. Margaret Atwood said in an interview that she was impressed that the costumes from the television series are now being used as a means of political protest.
Awards
The witnesses won in 2019 together with Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo the Booker Prize . In 2020 the novel was shortlisted for the British Book Awards .
expenditure
The original edition, entitled The Testaments , was published in September 2019 ( ISBN 978-0-385-54378-1 ). The German edition was published in the same year by Berlin Verlag , translated by Monika Baark ( ISBN 978-3-8270-1404-7 ).
Audiobooks were published in both languages. Aunt Lydia's texts in the English audio book version ( ISBN 978-1-78614-259-7 ) are spoken by Ann Dowd , who also plays this role in the television series; Read the other texts Bryce Dallas Howard and Mae Whitman as Agnes Jemima and Nichole, Derek Jacobi and Tantoo Cardinal as Professor James Darcy Pieixoto and Professor Maryanne Crescent Moon. Margaret Atwood reads the foreword, the afterword, the chapter titles and the credits herself.
The German audio book version ( ISBN 978-3-86952-433-7 ) is read by Leslie Malton , Eva Meckbach , Inka Löwendorf , Vera Teltz and Julian Mehne .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ann Dowd and More Will Narrate the 'Testaments' Audiobook. Retrieved April 6, 2020 .
- ^ A b Henry Chu, Henry Chu: Margaret Atwood on New Book 'The Testaments': 'Instead of Moving Away From Gilead, We Started Moving Towards It'. In: Variety. September 10, 2019, accessed April 6, 2020 .
- ^ Alison Flood: Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo share Booker prize 2019 . In: The Guardian . October 14, 2019, ISSN 0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed April 6, 2020]).