Margaret Atwood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” while in West Berlin in the 1980’s. She was motivated by the Cold War while writing her dystopian inspired novel. It was said by Atwood herself that while she was writing the novel, she had a box of newspaper clippings, in which she based most of the events in her book on. Across the globe, there was a political atmosphere that embraced communism and monetary constraint. The Handmaid’s Tale reflects upon those global issues in its plotline. A communist, Puritan party comes in and suppresses the people by getting ride of any social spending and tolerance to freedom of speech. Similarly to the novel’s plot, during the Cold War, United States was actually afraid of Communists taking over and restricting capitalism. The roots of the Atwood’s story go back to those of American Puritans, a society that was based upon theocracy. A lot of the religious Puritan leaders made statements that alarmed Atwood, but she put the religious ideals in her novel to remind leaders that what has been done in the past can be done again. In addition to the communist scare, Atwood focuses on fertility among women. Across the globe, there were depleting birth rates. There were many theories saying that countries (like Germany) would cease to exist due to the lack of productiveness. In Gilead, a handmaid’s only occupation is to birth children. For this reason, Atwood suggests that a republic like Gilead could exist because of the climbing numbers of the population. Atwood draws upon historical events to show that her novel is speculative fiction, that is could become a reality. She writes novels to not only focus on expressing herself literarily, but to inspect society as a whole.