Chapter Six of The Handmaid's Tale

Chapter Six Overview

• Characters:
• Offred - protagonist, can relate to fellow Handmaid Ofglen
• Ofglen - perhaps every act is for show, difficult to tell, going to the Wall is a small choice, but she is still unused to having choice
• Luke - the man Offred cares for, Offred is worried she will find him on the Wall
• Serena Joy - connected to the red tulips and the red smile
• Narrative:
• symbolism of red (tulips and smile) - HM's not being healed or having a positive experience, no love, just pain and blood
• compares past and present through double vision
• discontinuous narrative through frequent time shifts e.g. football stadium to salvagings
• untrustworthy narrator - 'heads of snowmen' - these are not like snowmen
• Language:
• only one occasion of dialogue between Ofglen and Offred
• Themes:
• identity - no freedom to express themselves individually
• power - no freedom, no power, completely controlled
• fertility

Diapositiva 2

• What does the execution of abortionist doctors show us about Gilead?
• Children are very important in Gilead. ('No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth.')
• Religious values contradict scientific benefits of abortion as abortion is absolutely wrong. (Abortions are described as 'atrocities'.)
• Abortionists are painted as criminals, perhaps as a propaganda campaign to brainwash or scare citizens of Gilead. ('must be made into examples, for the rest.')
• It is a serious matter to obey the rules of Gilead, and not doing so results in death.
• How does the description of the 'informants' like back to the 'ancestors' Offred saw in the pictures?
• The ancestors dress according to social expectations, which are similar to the uniforms in Gilead (Commanders in black, Handmaids covering hair).
• Similarly, informants give in to pressures of the regime, and cave to the pressure of interrogation. ('another doctor, hoping to save his own skin')
• Offred describes the abortionists as 'time travellers, anachronisms'. How far is Offred an anachronism?
• She remembers how life used to be and is mournful of what has happened to society.
• She doesn't feel how she's expected to feel towards the hanged doctors - she still has feelings from her past life.
• She is not used to living in Gilead, as she is used to the norms of past.
• Significance of the change of tense
• 'Luke wasn't a doctor. Isn't.' - She is try to subconciously believe that he is still alive.
• 'It will become ordinary' - use of future tense when the entire chapter was in present, trying to make herself believe something about the future.
• The use of different tenses shows how Offred has a retrospective view of the past and present, as she is retelling the story at a later date.
• Distinction between tulips and red smile
• Offred is surrounded by red things - her clothes, the tulips, the bloodstain smile.
• She refuses to see them as all the same thing, as she and the other Handmaids are defined by the colour red. (Literally: their identity is shown through their uniform, Biologically: their role depends on their menstrual cycle and fertility, the blood of which is represented by the colour red.
• Offred wishes to distinguish her own identity from the other Handmaids, so she cannot see all red things are the same.