25 book adaptations that surprisingly lived up to the books they’re based on

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a poignant exploration of society’s views of women and their bodies, and Hulu’s adaptation of Atwood’s most well-known novel certainly preserves its core themes and values. But while Atwood’s novel is on the shorter side of the literary sphere, Hulu’s series is able to explore the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale in far more depth.

To start with, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale ventures further into each character’s background and story far more than the book does. Atwood’s novel is plot-driven and focused primarily on the message it’s meant to convey, whereas the onscreen adaptation hones in on the people surrounding its main character, June, portraying their struggles as vividly as hers.

The television version of The Handmaid’s Tale also continues June’s story, delving into the resistance against society’s dystopian values far more than the book does. The book ends in a way that’s fairly open to interpretation, but the series sees June’s story all the way through, taking her character to new places in the process.

Given its more recent release, Hulu’s adaptation also draws many more parallels between June’s story and modern-day society. Though Atwood fills readers in on how this dystopia came to be, her descriptions aren’t as extensive as the show’s flashbacks, which demonstrate injustice and corruption going ignored—in ways that are eerily reminiscent of recent events.

Both Atwood’s story and Hulu’s interpretation of it are deserving of praise, but Hulu’s hits a bit closer to home—if only because it addresses such relatable dilemmas. And sticking to the source material’s main themes while making them applicable to a modern audience is a solid way to go about adapting a piece of literature.