Everyone is comparing Trump's border policy to 'Handmaid's Tale,' even the creator
Spoilers ahead: If you haven't watched Handmaid's Tale, you've been warned.
The Trump administration's forcible separation of children from their families at the U.S. border has everyone comparing it to The Handmaid's Tale — including Margaret Atwood herself.
The author of the dystopian classic has pulled many of the narrative's horrific happenings from history, and on Tuesday, Atwood acknowledged how believable Trump's cruel border policy would be within the Republic of Gilead.
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Author Stephen King had tweeted earlier that the current situation at the U.S. border was akin to the separation policy rolled out in Atwood's novel.
"Is this still America, or the months before Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale?" he asked.
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Atwood wrote the book in 1985, and it's been since lauded as a scarily accurate depiction of a dystopian future — Elisabeth Moss, who plays Offred in Hulu's Handmaid's adaptation, said last year that her character represents women in Trump's America. And the red outfits worn by handmaids in the show have become go-to protest garb.
Atwood even told the BBC in 2016, "Somebody has to tell the Republicans the Handmaid's Tale is not a blueprint."
Of course, the separation of children from their parents in The Handmaid's Tale is not a border issue -- in the sense that kids are snatched during the uprising -- but it's a similarly traumatic circumstance.
Children, including June and Luke's daughter, are separated from their parents as the Gilead regime comes to power. They're brainwashed and redistributed to selected new families within Gilead, while their mothers, if proven fertile, are forced into sexual slavery as handmaids. Once they've given birth, their newborn baby is taken away and given to their designated family.
Nevertheless, people can't help but see similarities in the dark timeline of The Handmaid's Tale in our current reality.
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With almost 2,000 immigrant children now separated from their families and placed in detention centers over a six-week period ending in May, and with the Trump administration just happening to pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, a Gilead-like existence doesn't seem too far-fetched for America.
Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.
