Chapter 7

'If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.'

Offred often muses on words and how their meanings can change. In a way, this makes words unreliable, as her narration will later prove to be.

She remembers snatches of the time before. Rallies her mother took her to. People burning books, because they did not agree with the content inside. Censorship. For her mother, this was a liberal act - an effort to emancipate women from pornography. For Gilead, who began with similar bonfires, pornography was repugnant in itself and all the sinners who enjoyed it or profited from it.

Another memory. The abduction of her child by the new state. Offred thinks she was drugged. It was the only way they could have controlled the transition.