The Handmaid's Tale- C30

The Handmaid's Tale- C30

1. summary

   • Offred sits by the window at night. She sees Nick in the garden, and he sees her in the window, a romantic moment they can’t consummate. Offred knows that Nick and Luke can’t be substituted for one another
     • Offred remembers the night before her escape attempt with Luke and their daughter. Luke realized that they couldn’t take their cat or give her away, so he took her to the garage and killed her. She wonders who informed the authorities about their leaving, possibly a neighbor or the passport forger. Offred can’t clearly remember her family’s faces.
       • Offred remembers saying bedtime prayers at the Rachel and Leah Center, when Aunt Lydia would adjust the Handmaids with a wooden stick so that they looked perfect. The Handmaids prayed to be empty so can be filled
         • In the current time, Offred prays out the window. She acknowledges that God probably didn’t want all this, and hopes He prevents her family from suffering too much. Offred thinks about how she could still hang herself on one of the closet hooks. she wishes god would respond

2. narrator

   • she isn't interested in other people apart from those who can help her 'someone of no importance'
   • didn't think things through 'hadn't thought about the cat' 'foolish that would be' when thinking about giving it to a neighbour
   • 'its my fault'- blaming herself for not remembering her family
   • made fun of the theocracy in regime- she thinks its stupid
   • 'inside my head it's equal darkness'- depressed and isn't filled with hope anymore
   • she isn't always thinking selfishly 'there are more important things' than 'forgiving me'- wants the best for her family
   • trying to be a good person by forgiving the person 'whoever did this' 'i'll try but it isn't easy'
   • she thinks 'about the chandelier too much'- death/suicidal 'I've considered the possibiliies'

3. other characters

   • motif of hunger between nick and offred 'which i can't indulge' so she resists temptation by pulling curtain so it 'falls between us'
   • offred feels nick and luke 'cannot replace each other'- they're both important, recognises regime is wrong in that people can't really be replaced
   • Luke and offred's relationship wasn't as strong as she didn't go with him to kill the cat or even 'asked him about it after'
   • 'faces like pictures in an album' 'blackness eats them'- can hardly remember her family/in the past now and not moving forward
   • moira's advice is strong 'you can't help what you feel..you can help how you behave'- strong willed

4. plot development

   • offred prays to God, turning to him as a last resort for guidance or love, using the lord's pray as a template and answering each part of the pray
   • she pleads to God at the end of her prayer and questions 'how can i keep on living?'

5. setting

   • it is nightime, 'night has fallen' and it is a 'heavy' atmosphere that is 'pressing down' on offred 'like a stone'

6. themes

   • love- Nick presents a new set of emotions for Offred. Instead of being a mistress, now she’s the one cheating, on Luke’s memory. Now that she’s in the active position, she’s more concerned about morality.

7. literary devices

   • simile 'scent' rises 'like heat from a body' 'like the shimmer above highway tarmac at noon'- comforting/but dangerous
   • 'like being in an elevator cut loose'- simile, know you are going to hit but don't know when- reference to moira with elevator
   • metaphor- 'ghosts at daybreak', come out to haunt her at night but disappear
   • asyndetic list 'heads bowed..elbows at proper angle'- regime's strictness

8. dystsopian features

   • 'like smoke from an unseen fire', simile, regime is invisible but destructive and hard to control
   • regime doesn't want handmaids to have any physical contact apart from ceremony, even with themselves 'long sleeved' 'keep us from the temptations of our own flesh'
   • to kill 'you have to create an it'- regime dehumanising people
   • regime turning people against each other 'tipping them off for a gold star'
   • wants the handmaids to be perfection 'christmas-card angels' but justified their rules for how they hold themselves by stating 'spiritual value of body rigidity'
   • handmaids prayed for 'emptiness' so they would be 'worthy to be filled'- regime brainwashing them, changing them
   • offred thinks that 'what's going on out there' isn't what God intended- abusing his name, ironic
   • regime kept handmaids in the dark at centre to stop 'temptation' 'knowing was temptation'

9. context

   • at the red centre, handmaids had to pray for 'emptiness', God could reward them with babies, regime brainwashed them into thinking being a woman was a gift from God
   • Religion becomes a means to power in general and over women, rather than an end in itself.
   • Aunt Lydia’s attentiveness to the superficial, visual quality of prayer echoes the Soul Scrolls of Chapter 27. Gilead uses the structure and rituals of religion, with none of the actual content.