THE HANDMAID’S TALE

Margaret Atwood

STUDY GUIDE

Key Facts about The Handmaid’s Tale

• Full Title: The Handmaid’s Tale

• Written: Early 1980s

• Where Written: West Berlin

• Published: 1985

• Literary Period: Feminist

• Genre: Speculative Fiction / Science Fiction / Dystopia

• Setting: Cambridge, Massachusetts under the dystopian government of the

Republic of Gilead, which has replaced the United States.

• Climax: The Eyes, (or maybe) the Mayday Resistance, come to pick up Offred

• Antagonist: Though the Commander, Serena Joy, and Aunt Lydia seem to be
Offred’s enemies, the real antagonist is the Republic of Gilead itself.

• Point of View: First person

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 INDEX

TOPIC PAGE NUMBER

Author Biography 3

Historical Context 3

Other books related to the novel 3

Plot Summary 4

Hierarchy 6

Character Sketch 7

Symbols 11

Themes 12

Chapter Summary and Analysis 17

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Brief Biography of Margaret Atwood

Atwood is the second of three children. Her father was an entomologist (insect
researcher), and she grew up playing in the Canadian woods. A writer since
childhood, she received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a
Master’s at Radcliffe College, the former women’s college affiliated with Harvard.
Atwood studied Victorian novels, which she has said influenced her belief that
novels should be about society as a whole, not just about the characters’ specific
lives. She has taught writing and English at many universities in Canada and the
US, and has published dozens of books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Critics tend
to acclaim her books, and she’s won major prizes. The Handmaid’s Tale is her most
famous book, and its title and themes are often invoked even in contemporary
discussions about women’s rights and theocracies.

Historical Context of The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood has written that her research on 17th-century American Puritans, who
created a rigid and inhumane theocracy based on a few choice selections from the
Bible, influenced Gilead. But the novel also responds to the modern political scene
in America. The religious right, with its moralizing tendencies, was gaining power in
America as backlash to the left-wing Free Love and feminist movements. In the
1970’s, Jerry Falwell and other Christian leaders urged the Republican party to
bring prayer back to schools, diminish abortion rights, and defeat the Equal Rights
Amendment, which was meant to support women. The Handmaid’s Tale shows
how religion can be used as an excuse to reduce women’s rights, a political
tendency which continues to occur all over the world.

Other Books Related to The Handmaid’s Tale

The title of the novel references Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a medieval collection
of stories about religious pilgrims going to Canterbury, with titles like “The Miller’s
Tale.” Though Chaucer’s stories have nothing to do with dystopias or feminism, they
reveal the foolishness and sinfulness of supposedly religious people, and Atwood’s
title shows that we should consider her futuristic story as part of a very old tradition
of storytelling. With its emphasis on labelling and female shame, the book also
bears similarities to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. And in a short essay about the
book, Atwood compares it to 1984, Brave New World, and A Clockwork Orange—
other widely influential dystopian fictions with political undertones, that quietly
suggest that the worlds they portray aren’t so far off from our world.

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PLOT SUMMARY

The United States has fallen, overthrown by a theocratic regime, founded on rigid
Christian principles and the disempowerment of women, which has installed a new
nation called Gilead in its place. The novel begins with Offred, the first-person
narrator, remembering her restricted life at the Rachel and Leah Center, a training
camp for Handmaids in an old high school. The scene changes to her current
residence, where she lives with a Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred puts
on a red uniform and goes on a shopping trip with Ofglen, and afterwards they stop
by the Wall to look at the bodies of recently executed men.

In the evening, Offred lies in bed. She remembers her spunky friend Moira, her
activist mother, and the loss of her daughter and her husband, Luke. She thinks
about the previous Handmaid who left a Latin message scratched into the wall. She
describes her trip to the doctor on the previous day. The doctor suggested that her
Commander might be sterile and offers to have sex with her. Though her life
depends on getting pregnant, Offred refused.

She takes a bath and thinks about her daughter and the hysterical Handmaid Janine.
After her bath, she and the rest of the members of the household gather to listen to
the Commander read the bible. Then the Commander, the Commander’s wife
Serena Joy, and Offred perform the Ceremony: the Commander has impersonal sex
with Offred while she lies between Serena Joy’s legs. Afterwards, Offred sneaks
downstairs in a rebellious gesture and runs into Nick, who gives her a message
from the Commander to meet the following night.

The next day, Offred and other Handmaids attend Janine’s birth. In the afternoon,
Offred remembers how Moira managed to escape from the Rachel and Leah Center
disguised as an Aunt. In the evening she sees the Commander, who surprisingly
only wants to play Scrabble and get a chaste kiss. Afterwards she can’t stop
laughing.

Months pass. Offred and the Commander meet often, and the Ceremony becomes
more fraught for Offred now that she and the Commander know each other. Offred
and Ofglen go shopping regularly, and Ofglen reveals that she’s part of a secret
organized resistance. Offred recalls all the events that lead from the US
government to the Republic of Gilead—a massacre of the President and Congress,
a succession of restrictive measures imposed for “safety,” the removal of all power
and possessions from women. One night the Commander explains the meaning of
the previous Handmaid’s Latin, and Offred learns that the previous Handmaid
hanged herself.

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After a shopping trip one day, Serena Joy tells Offred to have sex with Nick in an
effort to get pregnant, and Offred agrees. Offred and Ofglen attend a Prayvaganza,
celebrating arranged marriages. Afterward, Serena Joy shows Offred a photo of her
daughter. That night, the Commander gives Offred a skimpy outfit and makeup, and
Nick drives them to a nightclub/hotel filled with prostitutes. Offred spots Moira
across the room, and they meet in the bathroom. Moira reveals that she spent many
months on the Underground Femaleroad before she was captured. Offred and the
Commander get a room and have sex, and Offred has to fake arousal.

Shortly after returning home, Serena Joy leads Offred to Nick, and Offred doesn’t
have to fake arousal this time. Time passes, and Offred sees Nick often. She
becomes so obsessed with him that she doesn’t want to leave or help Ofglen with
Resistance efforts. Offred and Ofglen attend a Women’s Salvaging, where three
women are hanged. Afterwards there’s a Particicution, a frenzied group murder of a
supposed rapist, who was actually a member of the Resistance. The following day,
a new Handmaid comes for the shopping trip with Offred. She says that the old
Ofglen committed suicide when the Eyes—the Gilead secret police—came to get
her.

When Offred returns home after shopping, Serena Joy confronts her with the
skimpy outfit and threatens to punish her. Offred goes to her room and sees the
Eyes coming for her. Nick tells her that they’re secretly members of the Resistance,
and she enters their van, unsure of her fate.

The novel ends with “Historical Notes” from a future academic conference about
Gilead. Professor Pieixoto describes the discovery of Offred’s narrative on cassette
tapes in Maine, suggesting that the Eyes that took her were part of the Resistance,
as Nick claimed. It is revealed that researchers may have discovered who the
Commander was, but no one knows what happened to Offred.

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CLASS HIERARCHY

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 CHARACTER SKETCH

Offred (Of-Fred)

The novel’s protagonist and first-person

narrator, Handmaid of the Commander
and Serena Joy, former wife of Luke, and
lover of Nick. We never learn her real
name (Offred means “Of Fred,” her
Commander), and we know little about
her physical appearance. She has brown
hair, stands about five foot seven, and is
33 years old. Before Gilead, she had a
daughter with Luke at about age 25.
Moira was her best friend from college, and she had a rocky relationship with her
radical, outrageous mother. Though Offred is rebellious, even violent, in her
thoughts, and full of passionate
memories, she seems indifferent and
devout to outsiders, doing her best to
obey Gilead’s laws. Readers may be
quick to judge Offred for her passivity,
but her keen observations and honest
emotions, even after the terror and
brainwashing that she’s encountered,
demonstrate the limitations of
Gilead’s power over its subjects.

The Commander

The head of the household where Offred serves

as a Handmaid, and husband of Serena Joy. The
Commander has grey hair, wears a black suit,
and looks “like a Midwestern bank president.”
Though he is a high-ranking official of Gilead
who may have played a large role in its
construction, he breaks many laws, including
going to the sex club Jezebel’s (and at least
once hiring Moira), and spending time with
Offred. Though he attributes many of his
misogynistic attitudes to “Nature,” he cares for Offred’s well-being, and often
wants to know her opinion on controversial matters.

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 Serena Joy

Also known as the Commander’s Wife, she is

unable to have children and therefore requires
Offred’s services. Before Gilead, she was a singer
who became famous on TV for her emotional
Christian music. She also used to give speeches
about how women ought to be housewives.
During the novel, she occupies her time gardening
with Nick’s help, and knitting elaborate scarves
for soldiers, despite her arthritis. For
much of the novel, she resentfully
ignores Offred, but towards the end
she encourages Offred to try to get
pregnant by having sex with Nick.

Nick

The Commander’s driver and Serena Joy’s helper in the garden, and Offred’s
lover. Nick’s official position is Guardian, and he seems to be low-ranking because
he hasn’t been assigned a woman. From the beginning, he mischievously rejects
some of Gilead’s strictures (by rolling up his uniform sleeves, for example), but
the Commander and Serena Joy find him trustworthy and get his help for their
own misdeeds. He is secretive and discreet, and Offred can never quite figure out
what he’s thinking, even during
their love affair. The question of
his true alliances comes to a
head at the book’s cliff-hanger
ending, but the postscript
“Notes” suggest that he was
working for the Resistance after
all.

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 Luke

Offred’s pre-Gilead husband and father of her daughter. He was previously

married and had a long affair with Offred before divorcing his first wife. Though
Offred passes a lot of time remembering him, he seems to have been frequently
at odds with her emotions. He doesn’t seem greatly distressed when Offred loses
her job and must cede all her money to him. Perhaps he lacks sympathy, or
perhaps he’s sexist. After their failed escape, Offred imagines many fates for him,
but never pictures him joining with Gilead, although subtext suggests that he
might have.

Moira

Offred’s best friend in college, a brave, opinionated

feminist lesbian whom Offred encounters again at the
Rachel and Leah Center. After one failed attempt, she
manages to escape the Center and move along the
Underground Femaleroad, but the Eyes capture and
torture her. She decides to work as a prostitute rather
than go to the Colonies (the Colonies are essentially a
death sentence). When Offred sees her at Jezebel’s, it
seems that the authorities have managed to break
Moira’s spirit.

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 Aunt Lydia

Offred often remembers—and quotes—one

of the Aunts responsible for Offred’s “re-
education” at the Red Center. Aunt Lydia is
one of the least likable faces of the
Gileadean regime. Armed with a cattle prod,
she is responsible for some of the most
misogynistic statements in the novel, and
also some of the most extreme distortions
of religious ideas. For example, when she
warns Offred and the other Handmaids to
be careful of Wives, Aunt Lydia says:
“Forgive them, for they know not what they
do”—quoting Jesus on the cross. She then
adds, “You must realize that they are
defeated women,” because they have been unable to bear children (Chapter 8).
By making a woman an especially hateful representative of the Gileadean
government, the novel suggests that women are complicit in sustaining the male-
dominated regime. The “Historical Notes” section states this idea outright: “when
power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.” However, the “Notes” section also offers
a more sympathetic explanation for the motives of the Aunts. By joining the
Aunts, women “escape redundancy, and consequent shipment to the infamous
colonies.”

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 SYMBOLS

The Colour Red

The colour red appears constantly in the novel. Red is the colour of the
Handmaids, a colour associated both with shame (think of The Scarlet Letter) and
with ripeness and fertility. Offred expands the colour’s symbolic power, using it to
describe blood, sometimes as the life force that courses through her body, and
sometimes as a marker of violence and death, like the blood on the executed
criminals. One of the most common uses of the colour is to describe the tulips in
Serena Joy’s Garden. The flowers are sex organs, but their flourishing will be
futile since Serena Joy snips off their fruits.

The Eye

The novel is filled with eyes, which represent key topics like paranoia,
surveillance, and Gilead’s authority. The Eyes are the terrifying, violent, and
secretive enforcers of Gilead’s laws. As Offred worries that anyone she meets,
from the doctor to Ofglen, might be an Eye, she also sees eyes everywhere, from
a tour guide’s badge to her own ankle tattoo. The most complex eye in the book is
the plastered-over light socket in Offred’s room, which Offred imagines as a
blinded eye. Later she learns that the previous Handmaid hanged herself from the
light fixture that used to be there, so that blinded eye comes to signify death and
freedom as well.

Makeup

Makeup contains many contradictions relating to power and sexuality. It signifies

femininity, the past, and Offred’s lost freedom to control her appearance. But
others, like the Commander, think that the lack of makeup is actually a source of
freedom, since women now don’t have to use their appearances to compete for
mates. Still, the Commander enjoys going to Jezebel’s, where every woman
wears makeup with the hopes of attracting business. Handmaids especially
shouldn’t attempt to be beautiful, which would add another layer of difficulty for
the Wives and Commanders they serve. Yet Offred does her best to maintain her
appearance, carefully saving her butter as moisturizing lotion, even in a house
with no mirrors.

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 MAIN THEMES

GENDER ROLES

Gilead is a strictly hierarchical society, with a huge difference between the

genders. As soon as the Gileadean revolutionaries take over after terrorism
destroys the US government, they fire all women from their jobs and drain their
bank accounts, leaving Offred desperate and dependent. Luke, however, doesn’t
seem so furious at this turn of events, a subtle suggestion that even good men
may have embedded misogynistic attitudes, and that Gilead merely takes these
common views to the logical extreme. Soon Gileadean women find all liberties
taken from them, from the right to choose their clothes to the right to read.

Even women in positions of power, like Aunt Lydia, are only allowed cattle prods,
never guns. The Commander’s Wife, once a powerful supporter of far right-wing
religious ideas about how women should stay in the home, now finds herself
unhappily trapped in the world she advocated for. Gilead also institutionalizes
sexual violence toward women. The Ceremony, where the Commander tries to
impregnate Offred, is institutionalized adultery and a kind of rape. Jezebel’s,
where Moira works, is a whorehouse for the society’s elite.

Though the story critiques the religious right, it also shows that the feminist left,
as exemplified by Offred’s mother, is not the solution, as the radical feminists, too,
advocate book burnings, censorship, and violence. The book avoids black-and-
white divisions, forcing us to take on our own assumptions regarding gender. We
may blame Offred for being too passive, without acknowledging that she’s a
product of her society. We may fault the Commander’s Wife for not showing
solidarity to her gender and rebelling against Gilead, without understanding that
this expectation, since it assumes that gender is the most important trait, is just a
milder version of the anti-individual tyranny of Gilead. These complicated
questions of blame, as well as the brutal depictions of the oppression of women,
earn The Handmaid’s Tale its reputation as a great work of feminist literature.

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 RELIGION AND THEOCRACY

Gilead is a theocracy, a government where church and state are combined.

Religious language enters into every part of the society, from Rita’s position as a
Martha, named for a New Testament kitchen worker, to the store names like Milk
and Honey. And religion, specifically the Old Testament, is also the justification
for many of Gilead’s most savage characteristics. Offred’s job as Handmaid is
based on the biblical precedent of Rachel and Leah, where fertile servants can
carry on adulterous relationships to allow infertile women like the Commander’s
Wife to have families. Each month before the Ceremony, the Commander reads
from Genesis the same lines that make the book’s epigraph, justifying and
moralizing the crude intercourse that will take place.

Yet many of the biblical quotes in the book are twisted. The theocracy is so rigid
about its religious influences, and so emphatic about the specific rules it upholds,
that it even warps essential virtues like charity, tolerance and forgiveness. Offred
knows that the prayers that the Aunts play the Handmaids in the Rachel and
Leah Center are not the words that actually appear in the Bible, but she has no
way of checking. The Salvagings and executions are supposedly the penalty for
biblical sins like adultery, but Offred knows that others are executed for resisting
the government. The Handmaid’s Tale is not a criticism of the Bible in itself, but a
criticism of the way that people and theocracies use the Bible for their own
oppressive purposes.

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 FERTILITY

Fertility is the reason for Offred’s captivity and the source of her power, Gilead’s
major failing and its hope for the future. Inhabitants of Gilead give many reasons
for the society’s issues with creating viable offspring: the sexual revolution and
birth control, pollution, sexually transmitted diseases. And the book hints at
other, more subtle problems: in a society that restricts women so much, treating
the potential child-bearers alternately as precious objects, bothersome machines,
and prostitute-like sources of shame, how could anyone conceive? Similarly,
though Offred knows her life depends on a successful birth, the atmosphere of
extreme pressure and fear can’t be as successful a motivator as the hope, love
and liberty that characterized life with her first daughter and Luke. Despite the
sterile atmosphere, markers of fertility, such as flowers and worms, throng in the
Commander’s Wife’s carefully tended garden.

The Commander and his wife host Offred for her proven fertility, and they even
rename her as Fred’s possession—her body’s functions are valued, but her
personhood is not. This division is highlighted in Janine’s Birthing Ceremony,
where Janine’s Commander’s Wife pretends to give birth at the same time, and
the faked birth is treated as the authentic one. In this way, Gilead manages to
strip away even the Handmaid’s connection to the babies they bear in a version of
a sharing, collective society gone totally wrong.

REBELLION

Every major character in the story engages in some kind of disobedience against
Gilead’s laws. Moira rebels most boldly, disguising herself and managing to
escape from the Handmaids’ imprisonment, though her daring escape proves
futile, and she ends up at Jezebel’s, resigned to her fate. Ofglen’s rebellion is
more community-minded, since she works as part of an organized resistance,
although her careful plotting also ends badly. More unexpected are the small-
scale rebellions from the Commander and the Commander’s Wife.

The Commander seems to have every advantage, being a man, powerful in the
new regime, and wealthy. Gilead should be his ideal society, especially since the
book suggests that he had a role in designing it. Yet he desires a deeper
emotional connection, and cares enough about Offred’s well-being to break the
law and consort with her beyond his duties. The Commander’s Wife also tries to
get around the strictures of Gilead, setting Offred up with Nick in an illegal
attempt to make a family.

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These rebellious acts, coming from Gilead’s privileged group, add complexity to
their characters and to the dystopia as a whole. No one in the book is purely evil,
and no one is so different from real-world humans to fully embrace the lack of
independence in Gilead. Whether large or small, attempting to destroy the
Gileadean government or merely to make one’s personal circumstances more
tolerable, each character commits rebellious acts, highlighting both the unliveable
horror of Gileadean society, and the unsteadiness of its foundations.

LOVE

Despite Offred’s general passivity in the face of the oppressive society, she has a
deep and secret source of strength: her love. Though love might keep Offred
complacent, permitting her to daydream rather than to rebel outright, it’s also
responsible for the book’s greatest triumph, as love drives Nick to help Offred
escape, which she manages more effectively than Moira or Ofglen. Her love for
her mother, her daughter, Luke, Moira, and ultimately Nick, allow her to stay sane,
and to live within her memories and emotions instead of the terrible world around
her. Although the novel never proposes an ideal society or a clear way to apply
its message to the real world, and although the novel looks critically both on
many modern movements, including the religious right and the extreme feminist
left, love—both familial and romantic—surprisingly turns out to be the most
effective force for good.

Love is also a driving force behind other characters’ actions. We know that Nick
reciprocates Offred’s feelings, but also the search for love, in the form of a real,
not purely functional human connection, influences the Commander’s desires to
bend the rules for Offred. In the end, love is the best way to get around Gilead’s
rules, as it allows for both secret mental resistance, and for the trust and risk that
result in Offred’s great escape.

STORY-TELLING AND MEMORY

The structure of The Handmaid’s Tale is characterized by many different kinds of

storytelling and fiction-making. For one, the title itself, and the fictional “Historical
Notes on the Handmaid’s Tale” of the book’s end, frame the entire novel as
Offred’s story, that she’s said into a tape recorder in the old fashioned storytelling
tradition. For another, her whole story is also punctuated by shorter stories she
tells herself, of the time before Gilead or Aunt Lydia’s lessons. These small
flashbacks can be triggered by the slightest impression, and they occur so often
throughout the novel that it seems like Offred lives in several worlds, the terrible
present, the confusing but free past, and the Rachel and Leah Center that bridged
them.

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Adding to the overlap of past and present, the tenses are always shifting, with
some memories in the past tense, and some in the present. A third form of
storytelling comes about because of the constant atmosphere of paranoia and
uncertainty. Offred constantly makes up fictions. She’s filled with questions—is
Ofglen a true believer, or lying? Is Nick’s touching her foot accidental, or
intentional? Offred must keep several stories in mind at once, imagining each to
be true at the same time. This form of storytelling is most clear in her imaginings
about Luke’s fate, where he could be dead, imprisoned or maybe escaped.

Fourth, Offred also uses storytelling as a pastime. Since she has no access to any
entertainment, and very few events happen in her life, she often goes over events
from other people’s points of view, making up very involved fictions about what
others might be thinking and saying. One major example is her long imaginary
recreation of Aunt Lydia and Janine talking about Moira. Another is her creative
ideas about what Nick might think of her and the Commander’s relationship. With
more stories and memories than current-time actions, the book is profoundly
repetitive. It forms its own kind of simple, quiet hell—we, like Offred, are trapped
within the echo-chamber of her mind.

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 CHAPTER SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

PART 1 – NIGHT (Chapter 1) PART 9 - NIGHT (Chapter 24)

PART 2 - SHOPPING (Chapters 2-6) PART 10- SOUL SCROLLS

PART 3 - NIGHT (Chapter 7) PART 11 - NIGHT (Chapter 30)

PART 4 – WAITING ROOM (Chapters 8-12) PART 12 – JEZEBEL’S

PART 5 - NAP (Chapter 13) PART 13 - NIGHT (Chapter 40)

PART 6 - HOUSEHOLD (Chapters 14-17) PART 14 - SALVAGING (Chapters 41-45)

PART 7 - NIGHT (Chapter 18) PART 15 - NIGHT (Chapter 46)

PART 8 – BIRTH DAY (Chapters 19-23)

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 CHAPTER 1
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

The novel begins with the first-person narrator, Offred, The book’s first image emphasizes the way that memory and
describing the old gymnasium where she has been sleeping, old emotions sprout up through the strict new world order.
and the sense of longing and loss in the atmosphere. The But Offred won’t answer all our questions right away,
room feels layered with long-gone emotions of high school describing the scene without explaining.
dances and romance. She and other women sleep on army-
issue cots while Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth keep watch,
carrying cattle prods.

Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth aren’t allowed to have guns, Right away, Offred shows the importance of hierarchy and
the narrator explains. The guards outside, specialty members gender roles in this society. As bad as the Aunts are, there’s
of a group called the Angels, have guns, but they aren’t something worse waiting outside.
allowed to enter, just as the women aren’t allowed to exit
except for two walks per day.

Offred, like the other women, wishes that she could speak to Offred’s sole power is located in her body, which she knows
the guards, longing for some “deal” with them that she could the men will still respond to.
make with her body.

Though Offred and the other women aren’t allowed to speak The women assert their memories and their personhood by
to each other, they manage to draw each other’s attention rebelling, in an act as simple as telling each other their names.
and quietly whisper at night, when the Aunts aren’t looking.
They tell each other their names, including Janine and Moira.

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 CHAPTER 2
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred describes a different bedroom, with traditional, safe Like the gym, Offred’s room has a layer of strangeness over a
décor. Its distinguishing characteristic is a plastered-over hole structure of tradition and normalcy. Clearly someone has done
in the ceiling, formerly for a chandelier, that reminds her of an their best to make sure that the room is rebel-proof, as safe as
empty eye socket. Offred remembers Aunt Lydia telling her to a prison but more attractive. But the authorities who planned it
think of her life as being in the army. Offred notes that flowers are invisible and mysterious, and Offred doesn’t explain.
are permitted, but the print of irises in her room has no glass,
to prevent her from harming herself. If she tried to run away,
she wouldn’t get far. But she appreciates the sunlight and
being alive.

The bell rings to mark time, like in a nunnery, and Offred puts The comparison to a nunnery is both fitting, since Offred must
on her red uniform, including shoes, gloves, and a long modest live a silent, spare lifestyle based on religious principles, and
dress. She wears white wings around her face “to keep us wrong, since she’s a sex worker.
from seeing but also from being seen.”

Offred walks through the house, a stately, traditional home This scene highlights a major issue: the disunity and anger
with many restrictions. She’s not allowed to sit in the sitting between different women. Rita and Offred are both victims of
room, and she sneaks a peak in the round mirror in the the same anti-women regime, but their internal divisions mean
hallway. Offred takes her red umbrella and enters the kitchen, that they won’t band together and threaten Gilead.
where Rita, a Martha dressed in green, is kneading bread. Rita
does not approve of Offred’s position or red clothing.

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Offred recalls a conversation she heard between Rita and Though the new government has done its best to religiously
Cora, when Rita said that she would have preferred to go to justify the adultery of the kind Handmaids perform, Rita won’t
the Colonies and suffer than to have a position like Offred’s. give up her strong attitudes from earlier days.
Cora says she might have been a Handmaid, if she was
younger and hadn’t had a sterilizing operation.

Despite Rita’s unfriendliness, Offred wishes that she could The women’s gossiping is a form of rebellion, showing that the
stay, talk and gossip like in the old times. Sometimes the need to tell stories and connect socially is a strong human urge
women tell rumours of violence in other households. Offred that not even Gilead’s threats can subdue.
wishes she could touch the bread, which reminds her of a
body. Offred remembers Luke teaching her the word
“fraternize.”

Rita gives Offred the tokens for food, with images of food on Yet despite Offred’s interest in sociability and gossiping, she’s
them. Rita tells Offred to tell the shops her Commander’s unwilling to be bold and change her situation, from fear or
name to get fresh goods. Offred doesn’t smile at Rita, as she maybe from passivity and inertia.
doesn’t see the point of trying to make friends.

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 CHAPTER 3
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred walks through the garden on the way to the shops. The Serena Joy spends her time with two traditionally feminine
red tulips have bloomed and look, to Offred, as though they’ve hobbies that are related to fertility. The garden’s rampant
been cut and are healing. The Commander’s Wife, Serena Joy, blooming stands in contrast to the sterile world of Gilead, and
takes care of the garden, with the aid of a Guardian (Nick). the tulips’ colour links them to Offred. The childish scarves
Serena Joy, who has arthritis in her left foot, also passes time show Serena Joy’s desire to create and protect.
sewing and knitting elaborate, childish scarves for the Angels
at war. Offred imagines that maybe the scarves aren’t actually
used, but just unwoven into yarn again.

Offred recalls five weeks ago, when she arrived at the house. Offred filters her first encounter with Serena Joy through an
In her flashback, Serena Joy herself, identifiable by her blue additional layer of memory, which shows that she finds the
Commander’s Wife robes, opens the door. Offred remembers scene important enough to dwell on. Serena Joy comes off as
Aunt Lydia’s advice to be empathetic. Serena Joy smokes an a hypocrite, both firmly upholding the Gilead law that the
illegal cigarette. They talk, and we learn that this is Offred’s Handmaid and Wife should be separate, and rebelling by
third assignment to a Commander. Serena Joy says that they smoking a cigarette.
should interact as little as possible, and that this is strictly
business, which disappoints Offred, who longs for a closer
familial connection. Offred’s quiet, obedient answers remind
herself of a talking doll.

Still in the flashback to five weeks ago, Offred remembers Strangely, in light of her rebellious cigarette, we learn that
why Serena Joy looks familiar: from a religious television Serena Joy made religion her life even before Gilead.
program called the Growing Souls Gospel hour, where Serena
Joy was an emotional, beautiful singer.

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 CHAPTER 4
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Out of the flashback, Offred continues on her shopping trip. Offred constantly sees signs of rebellion and of fertility, the two
The path through the garden looks like a part in hair, and the things most on her mind. Offred is clearly well trained in Gilead’s
worms remind Offred of fertility. The Guardian assigned to laws, since she even knows a Guardian’s uniform rules. Yet the
the Commander, Nick, polishes the Commander’s fancy more aware one is of Gilead’s rules, the more one notices how
Whirlwind car. Nick demonstrates a touch of irreverence by many people break them.
rolling up his uniform sleeves and smoking a black-market
cigarette. He lives above the garage, but wasn’t given a
woman, which shows his low rank.

Nick winks at Offred, which alarms her. She doesn’t Gilead has successfully created an atmosphere of paranoia and
understand the gesture, which is a risky move that she could fear so powerful that Offred polices herself.
report to the authorities, and fears he might be an Eye.

Offred waits at the corner, recalling Aunt Lydia’s advice to be This moment also shows the extent to which Gilead has
patient and to imagine herself as a seed. She remembers infiltrated Offred’s mind. Everything reminds her of Aunt Lydia, a
children’s ballet classes, pretending to be a tree. Another sign of successful brainwashing. And rather than trust, people
red-clad handmaid, Ofglen, approaches, and they greet each operate on a basis of suspicion, making connections difficult.
other, saying, “Blessed be the fruit,” and “May the Lord
open.” Offred knows that they’re together not for their own
safety, but to spy on each other, and she thinks Ofglen might
be a truly faithful Handmaid.

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As the pair walks, Ofglen mentions how some rebel Baptists Little by little, Gilead’s rigidity is clarified. Not all Christians are
have been captured. The road is barricaded and heavily seen as being good in Gilead, though we never learn exactly
guarded, and the women must show passes to two green- what sects Gilead approves of. Despite everyone’s casual rule-
clad Guardians of the Faith. The Guardians aren’t soldiers breaking, Offred’s paranoia seems justified because of the
like the Angels, but take care of general policing and other government’s casual attitude towards murder.
lower-status tasks. Last week, the Guardians at a barricade
shot a Martha, according to Cora and Rita’s gossip.

The Guardians show respect to the Handmaids by saluting As she did at the Rachel and Leah Center, Offred fantasizes
them. One of the Guardians looks around Offred’s wings at about tempting the male guards with her body. She doesn’t
her face, a rebellious act that makes Offred imagine coming imagine her own gratification, though—instead, she imagines
back to him secretly at night. Offred imagines that maybe he having power, and making the men transgress. But Offred thinks
thinks about the same thing. Offred thinks about the that she’s the only one with such rebellious thoughts.
secretive black vans of the Eyes, which can go through the
barricades without pause. Ultimately, Offred decides that the
Guardians probably think about nothing more than duty,
promotion, and marriage.

Still, after passing the barricade Offred walks away in a Offred has no empathy, and doesn’t want to rebel as part of a
seductive manner, enjoying her slight sense of power, and team effort to overthrow Gilead. Instead, she wants to inflict
hoping that she’s aroused the men so much that they’ll suffer pain.
at night.

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 CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred and Ofglen continue on their shopping walk, passing As in the gym scene at the book’s beginning, Offred compares
beautifully maintained but childless neighborhoods in the the present with the romantic past. Notably, both the first scene
center of the Republic of Gilead, an area formerly occupied and this one take place at repurposed schools (a high school, and
by the professors of the now closed Harvard University. Harvard), suggesting how Gilead does not value such education.
Offred remembers walking here with Luke, dreaming about
having children and buying a big house.

Offred remembers the time before women were protected, This is the first of many instances where Offred acknowledges
both the constant precautions she had to take with men, and that the past is not perfect, and that Gilead has, from a certain
the freedom to choose her own clothes and spend money. point of view, made improvements.
She remembers Aunt Lydia defining the current situation as
“Freedom from,” instead of “Freedom to.”

Offred and Ofglen pass the clothing store called Lilies of the That the Biblical name of the grocery store (“Milk and Honey”
Field, which has an image instead of a sign, because reading comes from a description of Israel’s wonderful fertility, in
is illegal for women. They go to the similarly image-labeled Exodus), as well as the fact that women aren’t allowed to read,
grocery store Milk and Honey, which today has rare oranges further illuminate Gilead’s two prime interests: suppressing
in stock. A pregnant Handmaid comes in, and the other women, and basing the new laws on the Bible.
Handmaids are excited and jealous. The pregnant Handmaid
seems to be showing off. Offred thinks her belly resembles a
fruit. Offred realizes that the pregnant woman is Janine,
whom she knew in the Red Center (also called the Rachel
and Leah Center).

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Offred and Ofglen go to the meat store, called All Flesh. This passage shows the stream-of-consciousness ease with
Offred gets a chicken wrapped in paper. Plastic bags are rare which Offred slips into memories. She seems to live half in
now but she remembers when they were abundant. She Gilead, and half in the past. Only in memory does she have any
remembers Luke telling her to be careful about storing them, sort of freedom.
for their daughter’s protection.

A group of possibly Japanese tourists approaches on the Offred has an important moment of self-awareness when she
street. Offred stares at the women’s knee-length skirts and understands that she used to dress like the women she now
high heels, thinking that the shoes look like torture devices. finds repulsive. She understands how successfully Gilead has
The women also have bare hair and red lipstick. Offred and molded her mind, though she can’t overthrow her new opinions.
Ofglen are interested but disgusted, and Offred realizes her
ideas about this kind of clothing have changed very quickly.

The interpreter, with a winged eye pin, asks if the tourists Just like Offred’s confused reaction to Nick’s seemingly friendly
can take pictures of Offred and Ofglen. Offred denies the wink, we see Gilead’s power to make Offred so afraid and
request, remembering that Aunt Lydia told the Handmaids to paranoid that she follows all the laws.
be invisible. Offred suspects that the tour guide might be an
Eye. The tourists want to know if the Handmaids are happy,
and Offred says yes.

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 CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

As Offred and Ofglen return from their shopping trip, Ofglen Though Offred understands that people only want to remember
asks to go by the church. Offred agrees, knowing that the good things, we will see that she also can’t help remembering
motivation for going by the church isn’t actually religious. As bad things. Contradictorily, though her memories seem to be her
they walk, Offred looks at the view in little bursts, restrained last area of liberty, she is also plagued by involuntary memories
from full sight by the wings around her face. She remembers of terrible events, all related to Gilead. Gilead has taken her
the former uses of her surroundings, the river, boathouse and present and her past.
student dormitories of the now defunct Harvard University.
The football stadium is now used for Men’s Salvagings.
Offred thinks about how people only want to remember the
beautiful parts of the past.

Offred and Ofglen look at the small old church and Offred’s an equal opportunity skeptic, suspecting people of being
graveyard. Ofglen seems to pray, and Offred can’t tell if it’s Eyes or rebels.
an act.

Offred and Ofglen go to look at the real source of their For the first time, we see the violence that underlies Gilead’s
interest, the red-brick Wall. Once the border of Harvard’s government. Offred’s vivid imagination even links the dead men
campus, now it’s barricaded and guarded like a prison wall, to children’s drawings, combining the themes of theocracy,
to keep the people inside from coming out. Six dead men fertility, and rebellion in one image. The government both
hang along the wall, from the Men’s Salvaging. The faces are eliminates life and hopes to create it.
covered with white bags, which disturb Offred, reminding
her of scarecrows, dolls, zeros or snowmen. One bag has red
blood where the mouth would be underneath, which looks
like a child’s drawing of a mouth.

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The dead men wear white coats like doctors, and have signs Offred’s surprising callousness comes through again in this
around their necks indicating the reason for their execution: scene, like it did when she tried to tempt the checkpoint guards.
fetuses. They must have provided abortions before the She is immune to strangers’ suffering or a desire to support
Republic of Gilead, and some informant must have ratted rebels.
them out to the government. Offred feels nothing for the
men, but she’s glad they aren’t Luke.

Offred looks at the bloody red smile on the bag again. The This passage shows how Offred confuses memories and
red reminds her of Serena Joy’s tulips, but she reminds subjective impressions with reality. Superficial similarities (like
herself that this is a coincidence, and that the blood and the colour red) seem to reveal deep truths.
flowers are distinct phenomena, equally but separately valid.

Ofglen seems to be crying beside Offred. Offred isn’t sure if Offred returns to worrying about one of her constant concerns.
this is genuine emotion or just for show, and she doesn’t How can she distinguish between a true believer and a cautious
know what good such a show could do. She remembers faker?
Aunt Lydia saying that they will get used to Gilead and it will
become ordinary.

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 CHAPTER 7
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred lies in bed, thinking about the difference between the The distinction between active and passive is relevant both to
active word lie and the passive word lay, and the latter’s Offred’s gender (she’s always supposed to be passive) and her
sexual connotations. She lies under the plastered-over eye in memories (where she can make her own decisions).
the ceiling, deciding on a memory to explore now that she
has her private free time in the night.

She remembers Moira in the time before Gilead, wearing Though Offred spent a lot of time around radical feminists
overalls, an earring, one gold fingernail, and smoking. Moira before Gilead, here we learn that she never took their concerns
wants to go get a beer, but Offred is working on a paper. too seriously. She was always a bit passive.
Moira just wrote a paper on date rape, which Offred thinks
sounds like a dessert.

Offred switches to another memory, an older one. She Here we see a possible root of Offred’s suspicions about radical
remembers being in a cold park with her mother, going to feminists: they advocated censorship and destruction of reading
feed the ducks. But instead of actually feeding the ducks, materials, which parallels Gilead’s actions. The passage shows
Offred is sulky to learn that they’re there to burn books. that even feminists aren’t perfect or blameless.
Mostly women and some men burn books and magazines,
and they hand one to Offred to burn. The cover shows that
it’s bondage porn, which Offred is too young to understand
or object to.

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Offred can’t remember what happens next in her memories. Though Offred had active control over her previous two
She remembers a different time, when she must have been memories, now a bad moment from her past rears up without
drugged to help her get over a confusing shock. She her control. Gilead has even taken away her ability to remember
remembers waking up and trying to find out where her what she wants.
daughter has been taken. The authorities say she is with a
better fitting family, and show Offred a picture of her
angelic-looking daughter with another woman.

Offred wishes that she could believe that “this is a story I’m This passage powerfully illustrates Offred’s mixed feelings
telling,” because then she would be able to pick the ending about remembering and storytelling. She knows that these acts
and go back to her previous life. She affirms that she’s not are basically useless, but she also knows they give her a bit of
making it up, but it is indeed a story, and she’s not writing it hope, comfort and freedom.
but telling it to someone, even if she doesn’t know whom.
She imagines all the yous she could be talking to, and
pretends someone can hear her.

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 CHAPTER 8
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

The weather stays good, reminding Offred of the old days of The executions for “gender treachery” show that Gilead forces
dresses and ice cream. Back at the Wall there are three new men, as well as women, to conform to certain ideas of gender
bodies, a priest and two men hanged for Gender Treachery: norms. The dead priest highlights the pickiness of Gilead’s
homosexual activity. Offred is always the first to suggest to biblical interpretations.
Ofglen that they should leave. Offred still can’t tell what
Ofglen’s attitude towards the bodies is, but she resents her.

As they walk away, Ofglen comments on the beautiful May Offred doesn’t realize that “Mayday” stands for resistance. This
day. Offred remembers how Mayday used to be used in war is the first of many occasions when Offred’s memories and love
for pilots to signal distress. Luke once told her the word’s distract her from participating in the Resistance. Instead of
origins, from French, meaning “help me.” The women see a trying to figure out what Ofglen is attempting to signal, Offred
small funeral procession on the street, three Econowives acts typically—she feels something for the mourning
with black veils, one carrying a jar of her dead fetus. Offred Econowife, but doesn’t attempt a real connection.
feels sympathetic pain, but the Econowives gesture rudely,
disliking Handmaids. Offred and Ofglen part with the official
goodbye, “Under His Eye.” Ofglen seems to want to say
something else, but doesn’t.

At Offred’s house, Nick polishes the Commander’s In Offred’s response to the tulips, we get a view into her
Whirlwind. The red tulips look like empty chalices, and thoughts. She doesn’t see the point of attempting to bloom, or
Offred doesn’t understand what they are striving for. Nick the point of attempting to connect with Nick.
whistles and asks Offred how her walk was, but she doesn’t
speak, remembering Aunt Lydia’s advice.

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Offred sees Serena Joy sitting in the garden, and thinks that Despite Offred’s detached behavior, her thoughts are angry and
her name sounds stupid, like a hair product. Serena Joy chose rebellious. The story of Serena Joy demonstrates the rigidity of
her name; her given name was Pam. Offred remembers Gilead. Even a woman who grew famous for her staunch
seeing Serena Joy giving speeches about how a woman’s support of gender divisions and religion is not allowed to have
place is in the home, although Serena Joy herself was not any power in the new theocracy. This scene is also the first hint
just a housewife. She wore a lot of makeup and cried that Luke and Offred might not have been the perfect pair that
dramatically. During that time, there were two attempts on Offred likes to imagine.
her life, and though Luke found her emotional persona funny,
Offred was scared. Offred imagines that Serena Joy must be
angry now that she can’t give speeches and has ended up
stuck in the home after all.

Offred looks at Serena Joy’s sunken profile as she passes. Offred’s constant recollections of Aunt Lydia show another way
Her face reminds Offred of fallen towns. Offred recalls Aunt that Gilead has dominated her memories. The scene also shows
Lydia saying that the Wives of the Commanders will hate the how Gilead cleverly caused divisions that make women hate
Handmaids, and that the Handmaids should be empathetic. each other. Then, Aunt Lydia’s urgings for sympathy make her
Offred remembers Aunt Lydia’s happy and devout seem religious and fair.
expression as she lectured the Handmaids. Aunt Lydia
looked like God was appearing to her on a cloud of powder
makeup.

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Offred enters the kitchen, where the smell of bread reminds Though Offred shows her violently rebellious side by longing
her of the past and mothers, though her mother didn’t bake. for the knife, in the scene she’s paralleled with the chicken. Like
She tries to block the “treacherous” scent. Rita cuts carrots, the chicken, she’s a passive body and a household chore that
and Offred desires the knife. Rita, as usual, seems displeased the Marthas must take care of.
with the groceries, and Offred mentions the oranges at Milk
and Honey, to no reaction. Rita pokes at the headless
chicken. Cora enters, and she and Rita discuss who will take
care of Offred’s bath.

Offred goes upstairs, pausing to enjoy the light through the Like Ofglen previously in the chapter, the Commander seems to
stained glass. The convex mirror looks like an eye to her. The want to communicate something. But Offred worries more
Commander is standing outside her room, which he’s never about his meaning than she did about Ofglen’s, showing how
done before. He walks away when she arrives, and she tries Offred worries most about what might personally affect her.
to interpret his gesture. She realizes that she thinks of the
room as hers.

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 CHAPTER 9
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

As Offred waits in her room, she thinks about the This memory shows how Offred fuses love, freedom, and
household’s previous Handmaid. When she first arrived, she carelessness in her mind. She longs for the past, but she also
began her slow examination of every nook and cranny in the realizes that her new perspective allows her a greater
room, and found evidence of its previous resident. Offred appreciation for what she previously took for granted. Gilead
gets sidetracked into another memory: she remembers has shrunk down the range of experiences she can have, but it
looking hastily through hotel rooms, when she used to meet has made her extremely attentive to detail and nuance.
up with Luke when he was still married to his first wife. She
remembers her nervousness and confusion about his feelings
and about the affair. She didn’t appreciate the happiness she
had. She misses the carelessness and independence of
staying in hotels.

Offred returns to her main memory of examining her Offred’s swooning memory of Luke demonstrates how she is
bedroom when she arrived at the house. She explored every still able to feel the emotions of the past even in the present
tiny detail, including mattress stains that suggested old that tries to suppress them. As well as thoughts of love,
lovers, and felt faint, thinking of Luke. On the third day after rebellion takes up a large part of her attention—the hooks
her arrival, she looked at the cupboard, where there were immediately signify suicide.
still hooks, allowing the potential of self-harm. In the darkest
corner, someone wrote “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”

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Though Offred doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase, Even without understanding the Latin, Offred’s act of reading is
suspecting it might be Latin, she is happy imagining the rebellion, since women are forbidden to read. Offred’s active
previous Handmaid who sent her the message, and happy to imagination melds together Moira to the previous Handmaid.
have received it. She thinks of Moira’s energy and freckles, Though Rita won’t be her friend, Offred can communicate with
and imagines that the previous Handmaid must have had and love her own imaginary friends.
freckles too. Offred flashes back to another memory, when
she asked Rita about the previous Handmaid, and pretended
to know her, mentioning her freckles. Rita refused to explain
why that Handmaid left.

CHAPTER 10
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred sometimes sings herself “Amazing Grace,” a song “Amazing Grace” is a religious song that also was an important
now banned for the word “free.” She also sings a song about slave spiritual before the American Civil War. The song links
loneliness that she remembers from her mother’s cassettes. Gilead to the Confederacy, and highlights how the Bible can be
The only other music in the house is Rita’s occasional interpreted both for freedom and for slavery.
humming, or Serena Joy illegally listening to recordings of
her young self singing religious songs.

It’s hot and soon Offred will wear her cotton summer As in Chapter 8, we see how Aunt Lydia cunningly acts like
dresses. She remembers Aunt Lydia disdaining the scantily- she’s on the side of good. She puts on a calculated show of
clad women of the past, who she said looked like cooking caring, even while she indoctrinates the Handmaids to Gilead’s
meat. Aunt Lydia thought that such women brought certain rules. Still, the passage shows that Gilead has improved some
things upon themselves. In a memory of Offred’s from the things, like eliminating sexual harassment.
Rachel and Leah Center, as Aunt Lydia began to explain
something about men and women lying out in public, she

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began to cry. Aunt Lydia said she was trying to do her best
for the Handmaids, and that it was not easy.

Offred retreats into another memory, of Moira. In the Moira’s party is a feminist attempt to take control of female
memory, Moira is planning an “underwhore” party to sell sexuality. But Offred’s previous memory of Aunt Lydia throws
sexy lingerie. Moira makes a joke about how women feel the Moira’s actions into doubt. Is the “Underwhore” party really a
need to compete with porn, and Offred laughs. Back in the promotion of women’s rights, or does it feed right into the
present day, Offred muses about how she and others culture of porn and men’s gratification?
ignored the gradual changes that lead to Gilead, including
the discoveries of the beaten corpses of women. She thinks
that it’s easy to ignore bad things when they happen to other
people.

Offred sits at the window seat, which has a cushion that says The faith cushion, just by having writing on it, forces Offred into
“faith” on it (though it’s illegal for her to read). Veiling her a kind of passive rebellion. This memory of Moira further
face with the curtain, she sees the Commander go out to his complicates Offred’s attitudes towards feminism. Is Moira really
car, with Nick standing by. She imagines throwing something teaching the boys anything, or is her bag-dropping simply
out the window at the Commander, then remembers flirtatious?
dropping water-filled bags on boys with Moira in college.
The Commander leaves, and Offred can’t quite figure out her
feeling towards him, which is neither hate nor love.

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 CHAPTER 11
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred went to the doctor yesterday morning for her regular Like the scene with Rita poking the chicken, or Offred’s
monthly checkup. She remembers the appointment in symbolic connection with the tulips, this scene shows how
present tense. A Guardian with a red armband drives her to Offred is a passive, interchangeable object. Now her body is like
the appointment and waits outside. Offred shows her pass to a fruit, another fertility symbol. Yet the doctor’s flirtatious
the armed nurse. The examination room has a red screen “honey” bothers Offred—she’d prefer to be as impersonally
with an eye painted on it. Offred takes off her clothes and treated as possible.
lies on the table, with a sheet blocking the doctor’s view of
her face. The doctor is more talkative than necessary and
calls her honey while examining her, testing her breasts like
fruit, and proclaiming her healthy.

The doctor gets close to the sheet, offering to help Offred. At Offred’s quick, improbable hope about Luke shows how love,
first she thinks he might help her find Luke. Then he lifts the rather than sex or self-preservation, is honestly her first priority.
sheet, though his face is partly obscured by a medical mask, The doctor’s offer doesn’t come off as a purely helpful act of
and touches her sexually. He says that many Commanders resistance. He touches Offred without her permission, in a
are sterile, a taboo word that shocks Offred, since only throwback to pre-Gilead harassment.
women, according to the law, might have reproductive
difficulties. He says many Handmaids have taken such steps,
and that it’s the right time of the month for Offred.

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The doctor is sympathetic but also enjoying the situation. Though the doctor’s offer seems to represent a tantalizing
Offred thinks it’s too dangerous, frightened that it might be a opportunity to improve her situation, Offred is paralyzed by
trap. She could get killed for having sex with him, but she uncertainty and risk. She’d rather follow Gilead’s laws than try
could also get killed for not being able to have a baby with to improve her life, which demonstrates that Gilead, despite all
the Commander. Though Offred turns the doctor down, she its horrors, is tolerable and even reassuring to Offred.
tries to act open, knowing that he has the power to say that
she’s sick and have her sent to the Colonies with the
Unwomen. Though she’s committed no crime, she realizes
that she’s most afraid of the opportunity to change her life.

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 CHAPTER 12
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Back in the present day, Offred takes her bath. The bath has The bath shows the difficulty of quashing rebellion: despite the
no mirror, razors, lock, or other items that could allow the long list of banned, dangerous materials, Offred is allowed to
possibility of suicide. Cora ran the bath and now sits outside. sit alone in the bath, where she could drown. As much as
Offred remembers Aunt Lydia saying the bath is a vulnerable Offred fantasizes about escape, she’s constrained by her own
spot, and Aunt Lydia explaining the Biblical precedent for mind.
women having long hair. Offred enjoys taking off her habit
and wings and feeling her own hair. Offred remembers
Moira’s disdain for pantyhose.

Offred feels strange to be naked, and wonderingly Offred tries to ignore how Gilead has reduced her to an object,
remembers wearing a swimsuit. She doesn’t look at her body a body. But her distaste for looking at herself reveals that she’s
because it is “something that determines me so completely.” internalized the Gileadean attitudes.
The water feels like hands, holding her.

In a spontaneous flashback, Offred remembers her daughter As with Luke’s nonchalant opinion of Serena Joy in Chapter 8,
as a baby. She remembers when a stranger tried to steal her we see that Offred and Luke weren’t always in exact
eleven-month-old when she and Luke were at the agreement. Or perhaps before Gilead Offred agreed more with
supermarket. Luke was buying steak, which he thought men Luke (after all, Offred thought “date rape” sounded like a
were proven to need more than women, affirming a real dessert), and only now, in memory, does she focus on his
difference between the sexes. He liked to tease Offred’s insensitivity.
mother about such things. Offred heard her daughter crying
and found that a stranger had taken her, saying God had told
her it was hers. Luke dismissed the stranger as crazy.

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Offred imagines her daughter as a ghost who died at age Even Offred’s love of her daughter has been tainted by Aunt
five. Offred laments the loss of her photos, clothes and baby Lydia’s Gileadean values. Offred wants to think about objects,
hair. She remembers Aunt Lydia saying that if people should but Aunt Lydia comes in to scold her, and effectively
care more about spirituality than materiality. Offred wonders reorganizes her thoughts. Even after the memory of Aunt Lydia
if her daughter remembers her, certain that the authorities retreats, the influence remains—Offred would rather be
must have told her daughter that her mother had died. Her hopeless than feel like she could do anything.
daughter would be eight now. Offred thinks it’s better to
imagine her daughter as dead, which is less painful than
hope.

Cora tells Offred to hurry up. Offred tries to make herself The number tattoo links Gilead to the Holocaust. The eye
very clean, since her bath opportunities are limited. She looks suggests that even Offred’s body is watching—a metaphor
at her tattoo on her ankle, with four numbers and an eye, come true, since she paranoiacally self-polices herself at all
which ensures she will always be identifiable. She dresses times.
but doesn’t put on the wings, since she’s staying within the
house.

Cora brings Offred her dinner, and Offred is pleased that Like the “chalice”-like tulips in Chapter 8, Offred sees herself as
Cora bothers to knock at her door. Rita has overcooked the empty and waiting to receive. But the thing she needs to fill
chicken to show her dislike of Offred. Aunt Lydia used to herself with clearly isn’t food. Her hiding the butter is her first
emphasize the importance of proper nourishment, to be “a real active action against the rules, suggesting that maybe
worthy vessel.” Offred is too nervous to eat, but chokes Offred isn’t as passive as she seems.
down the food because she has no place to hide it. She
imagines the luxury and freedom of Serena Joy’s dinner
downstairs. Offred carefully saves a piece of butter, which
she plans to use for something later.

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 CHAPTER 13
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred thinks about how she has too much time, and wishes Though Offred doesn’t have sympathy for the hanged men in
she could have a hobby like knitting. She remembers Chapter 6, here she has imaginative sympathy for people and
nineteenth century paintings of fat women in harems, with animals who seem much more distant.
whose boredom she now sympathizes. She, too, is waiting
for a man to put her to use. She sympathetically imagines a
caged pig or lab rat.

Offred lies on a rug, practicing pelvic exercising like Aunt Offred offers another possibility to explain Gilead’s success,
Lydia advised. Offred remembers the naptime in the Rachel and (between the lines) her own hopeless yet accepting
and Leah Center, thinking that it was training for later behavior: drugs. She never sees how her food is prepared, so it
boredom. She and her fellow Handmaids slept, but she seems possible.
didn’t know if they were truly tired, shocked, or on drugs.

Offred remembers Moira’s arrival at the Rachel and Leah The Testifying scene shows where Aunt Lydia’s
Center, three weeks after her own. She and Moira tried not to encouragements to be sympathetic and to work together
be obvious about their friendship, but managed to schedule break down. Women turn against women in a dramatic scene
an appointment to talk in the bathroom. They plan to meet of peer pressure and self-blaming.
up at two thirty, during Testifying. Aunt Lydia and Aunt
Helena lead the Handmaids to describe Janine’s rape as her
fault, and as God’s will to teach her a lesson.

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Offred remembers the previous week, when Janine began The punishment for a blameless, natural body function is in
crying during Testifying, and the others hated her and called line with Gilead’s will to blame women for their inability to
her a crybaby. This week, Janine admits that it’s all her fault. have children, even when the men are the sterile ones.
Offred carefully times her bathroom request, as she knows Though in later chapters the Commander will describe the
that sometimes the Handmaids are not permitted, pee on scientific basis for Gilead, this scene shows its irrationality.
themselves, and are punished. Offred is allowed to go out. In
one stall, there’s a peephole through the wall to the
women’s bathroom, and she manages to make contact with
Moira.

Back in the present time, Offred thinks about her body, her This scene offers another possibility to explain Offred’s
blood like red waves, and her failure to become pregnant. passivity—she did try to rebel once, and she lost everything
She imagines the first apartment she shared with Luke, all she loved. Offred’s memories of her past failure to protect her
empty, with no suitable clothes. She remembers running daughter and stick with Luke are linked (also with the color
through the woods with her daughter, whom she drugged to red) to her present failure to achieve Gilead’s demands. Duty
be quiet. Shots are fired behind her, so she drops and to Gilead and duty to loved ones are parallel in her mind.
protects her daughter, momentarily fascinated by a beautiful
red leaf. She loses consciousness, feeling her daughter
pulling away. Cora and a bell wake her from her nightmare.

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 CHAPTER 14
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred goes downstairs, passing the eye-like mirror. She As with the childish scarves, Serena Joy’s perfume reflects her
kneels in the sitting room. The room is luxuriously profound longing for a baby, as well as the way that babylike
decorated in Serena Joy’s mixed style of quality and things in Gilead are so rare that they are valuable and beautiful.
sentimentality. Serena Joy’s perfume, Lily of the Valley,
smells like innocent girlishness, which makes Offred sick.
Offred wishes she could steal something, to have a bit of
power.

Cora, Rita and Nick enter. Nick touches his foot to Offred’s. Although Offred just wished she could rebel and have a bit of
Nick touches again and Offred moves again, unsure of his power, when Nick makes a possibly rebellious gesture, Offred
intentions. Serena Joy arrives in a flower-trimmed dress, doesn’t participate. Nonetheless, she rebels against Serena Joy
but Offred thinks that Serena Joy should accept that she’s mentally.
“withered” instead of bedecking herself with plants’
reproductive organs.

The Commander is late, so Serena Joy turns on the TV The battles against the Baptists that Ofglen alluded to in
news, which shows the Angels attacking the Baptists in the Chapter 4 continue. The television doesn’t try to disguise the
Appalachians. Offred isn’t sure if the TV shows reality or if situation, instead showing Gilead in all its might.
everyone’s an actor. The TV then shows thousands of
“Children of Ham” being transported to some kind of camp
in North Dakota.

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Offred retreats into a memory, when she still had her old This memory demonstrates that, despite their differences, Luke
name. She imagines getting into a car with her daughter and Offred complemented each other’s personalities. Even
and Luke, pretending to be going to a picnic, but secretly before becoming a Handmaid, Offred tended to be scared.
planning to escape to Canada, with fake passports all
prepared. Luke sings confidently, but Offred is petrified.

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 CHAPTER 15
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

The gray-haired, neat Commander arrives, wearing a black In our first real-time glimpse of the Commander, Offred pictures
suit. He unlocks the Bible from its box and sits down to his sexuality as disgusting and crude. Her mental rebellions
read. Offred tries to imagine his point of view, scrutinized seem to help her cope with the pressure of the meeting, as she
like this. She imagines his penis as a slug eye. She knows is the one who’s supposed to bring fertility.
he’s very powerful, and can’t tell if his position is fine or
hellish. The Commander reads biblical passages about
fertility.

Offred has a flashback to the Rachel and Leah Center, and The edited biblical passages show that the government of
remembers listening to a tape recording of the Beatitudes Gilead isn’t simply trying to interpret the Bible, but to twist it to
at lunch, clearly an edited version, although Offred wasn’t suit their politicized goals and interpretations.
sure what had been omitted.

Offred remembers meeting up again with Moira in the Offred, too, has fantasies about seducing men to gain power,
bathroom. Moira planned to escape by pretending to be but only Moira dared to try.
sick, and perhaps trying to seduce the ambulance drivers.

Back in the present time, the Commander finishes reading. Moira, like Offred in her way, is more interested in saving her
Offred imagines the bible pages feeling powder-paper own skin than organizing the other Handmaids into revolution.
makeup. Serena Joy silently cries. As Offred prays “Nolite te Moira’s escape and capture may have led the other Handmaids
bastardes carborundorum,” she remembers seeing Moira into the small-scale rebellion of stealing, but on the whole, the
carried to an ambulance for appendicitis at the Rachel and severity of her punishment may have actually made the
Leah Center. Right afterwards, Moira was dragged back Handmaids more afraid.
into the Rachel and Leah Center and the staff severely

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tortured her feet. The other Handmaids stole sugar for her
in a gesture of solidarity. Back in present time, the
Commander dismisses the household.

CHAPTER 16
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred lies on her back on Serena Joy’s canopy bed, This scene is the meat of what being a Handmaid is all about—
clothed except for her underpants. The bed’s draperies being a body, a receptacle for sex. Maybe unexpectedly, Offred
look like ship’s sails, pregnant with air. Offred lies doesn’t picture Luke or love, but remains emotionally removed,
between Serena Joy’s (clothed) legs, and they hold hands. simply glad the current Commander doesn’t have a bad odor. In
The Commander has sex with Offred’s lower body, in an the moment when her imagination could have served her, she
impersonal, disjointed style, which Offred doesn’t call rape prefers seriousness.
because she chose to be a Handmaid. The atmosphere is
serious, as arousal, love, and kissing are unnecessary.
Offred remembers her previous Commander, who smelled
worse.

After coming, the Commander leaves quickly and politely, Serena Joy’s action shows that, for now, woman-on-woman
which Offred finds somehow funny. Serena Joy makes hatred outweighs her desire to have a baby at all costs.
Offred leave immediately, although she’s supposed to lie
down for ten minutes to increase the chances of
conception.

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 CHAPTER 17
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred returns to her bedroom and finds her pat of butter When Offred finally does complete her rebellious action, it’s just
half-melted in her shoe. She rubs the butter into her face for her own comfort (and maybe beauty). Sadly, her Red Center
as moisturizer, since she isn’t permitted any makeup of peers didn’t manage to impart any more meaningful schemes.
lotion, for the sake of the Wives. Offred learned about the
butter at the Rachel and Leah Center, which she explains
was also called the Red Center.

Offred lies in bed, imagining the plastered eye in her Offred’s love for Luke gives her the emotional capacity to take a
ceiling staring at her. She looks at the moon and more decisive action.
profoundly misses Luke, and decides to steal something.

Offred carefully walks downstairs and resolves to steal a Though Offred’s thoughts of Luke may have brought about her
daffodil. She hears Nick’s footsteps. They’re both breaking rebellious moment, she immediately begins acting sexually with
the rules. They touch each other. Offred longs to do more, Nick. As with the blood and tulips in Chapter 6, separate entities
thinking of Nick as Luke in another body, but she’s afraid. seem to merge.
Nick says he was coming to tell Offred to go see the
Commander tomorrow.

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 CHAPTER 18
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred lies in bed, disturbed and aroused by her encounter Offred prefers to remember than to take action, even when she’s
with Nick. She remembers spending time with Luke when by herself.
she was pregnant. She feels too dead to masturbate.

Offred believes in several different fates for Luke. First she Though Offred has previously said that she prefers not to hope
imagines Luke as a corpse lying in the forest, and hopes (for example, in Chapter 12, when she thinks about her
he had a quick death from a bullet. Then she imagines him daughter), this passage shows her being both hopeful and
alive in prison, worn down and old-looking, with a gash as maybe wilfully blind. She misses out on one big possibility—
red as tulips on his face. Finally she imagines him safely maybe Luke is now working for Gilead. But Offred would prefer
over the border, making contact with a Resistance to idealize Luke, and maintain her love for him as a form of
movement. She imagines that Luke might find a way to escapism.
send her a message and rescue her and their daughter.
Offred keeps believes in all three possibilities for Luke at
once, or else she feels that she can’t believe in anything.

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 CHAPTER 19
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred dreams first that she has seen and picked up her After the night’s surprising moment of connection with Nick,
daughter, and then that her mother has come to take care Offred dreams of other connections with loved ones. The egg
of her. When she truly wakes up, she wonders if she’s wearing a skirt is an amusing reminder of the household’s hopes
been drugged. She sits on the Faith cushion and slowly for, and the way it views, Offred.
eats breakfast, noting that her eggcup looks like a skirt,
and taking pleasure in the beautiful egg.

A red van, a Birthmobile, comes to the house to pick up Gilead’s laws are less strict towards Handmaids on Birth Days,
Offred. A Guardian drives her and several other which demonstrates Gilead’s canny balancing of restriction and
Handmaids to Ofwarren’s (Janine’s) house for her birth. release, to ensure that Handmaid life is tolerable.
One of the other handmaids cries with joy. The Handmaids
are allowed more freedom than usual in their behavior on
birth days.

Offred knows that the chance of a healthy, living, normal- The blights that led to Gilead’s fertility issues relate both to
bodied baby is just one in four, because of many different environmental issues and issues relating to the sexual liberation
problems that lead to sterility: radiation and pollution, of the 1960’s. Unsurprisingly, women get the blame for trying to
atomic power plant mishaps, pesticides, syphilis, birth control the results of their sexual activity.
control pills, and women having their tubes tied. Offred
remembers Aunt Lydia scorning the women who sterilized
themselves and calling them Jezebels.

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Offred goes deeper into her flashback from the Rachel and Offred’s rage at Aunt Lydia about these issues could have
Leah Center. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that several sources. Offred may be particularly upset that Aunt Lydia
some women self-sterilized because they thought the is criticizing women for trying to be responsible. Or perhaps
world was ending. Offred’s school desk had love Offred regrets the loss of freedom and love that the desk
messages carved into it, but none after the mid-eighties, carvings represent.
when schools were closing because there weren’t enough
children. As Aunt Lydia talks about the Handmaids’
importance, Offred wants to kill her.

Back in the present day, the Birthmobile arrives at Throughout the book, we’ll see Offred’s shocking lack of
Ofwarren’s house, and we learn that Ofwarren is Janine, sympathy for Janine. Janine isn’t even necessarily a true believer,
whom Offred disdains and thinks of as a “whiny bitch.” but she’s weak-willed, and Offred finds that even more
Women must give birth without painkillers or medical deplorable.
intervention because that’s what’s in the bible.

Offred imagines how the Wives talk about the Though Offred dislikes the Wives for disdaining the Handmaids,
Handmaids. One might say that a Handmaid is like a Offred holds similar opinions towards Janine.
daughter to her, but the others talk about the Handmaids
as pesky animals or objects who are not to be trusted.

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 CHAPTER 20
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred sees the fancy birth day buffet laid out for the Aunt Lydia’s point about how the future generations would find
Wives, including wine and oranges. The gray-haired Wife this easier seems unlikely, given the clear inequality between the
of Warren lies on the floor as though she’s about to give Handmaids and the Wives. While the Wives get to enjoy
birth as well. Janine lies on the master bedroom’s large themselves and make believe, the Handmaids must suffer. Yet
bed, pushing hard, and Offred feels a little more sympathy Offred remembers Aunt Lydia’s point without questioning it,
for her. Aunt Elizabeth stands by to help, and the showing how she has learned her role.
Handmaids sit on the floor. Offred remembers more
biblical justification for Handmaids, and Aunt Lydia saying
that all this would be easier for future generations, who
won’t have unrealistic desires.

Offred has another flashback to the Rachel and Leah This scene echoes the feminist bondage-porn burnings in
Center. She remembers the weekly movie time, which Chapter 7. In an ironic twist, Gilead shows the Handmaids what
reminded her of watching films in high school. She thinks the feminists wanted to censor, as well as censoring what the
of the camera lens, as seen by primitive populations, as a feminists wanted to propose. At least on the issue of torture
“glass eye.” But instead of anthropological movies, Aunt porn, Gilead and Offred’s mother are unified.
Lydia shows sadistic porn and even a movie of a woman
being killed. She also shows movies of Unwomen,
feminists in this context, but without volume so the
Handmaids can’t hear their ideas.

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In one film of the Unwomen that Aunt Lydia shows at the Offred’s mother’s desire to have a baby shows another similarity
Rachel and Leah Center, Offred sees her mother at a between her values and Gilead’s. The disapproval of Offred’s
feminist rally. Offred has a further flashback, to her mother’s feminist friends demonstrates how feminists can also
mother talking about her decision to have a baby. She had be closed-minded.
Offred at age 37, and her feminist friends and her doctors
criticized her for being too old.

Offred remembers how her lively mother would come Offred’s mother’s tears echo Aunt Lydia’s tears in Chapter 10.
over to dinner with her and Luke and criticize their lives. Both women were ideological leaders, hoping to draw other
Offred’s mother criticized Offred’s absentee father, who women to their cause, while also feeling the difficulties of being
she found perfectly nice but distracted and frivolous. Luke a frontrunner of a bold new movement.
played the devil’s advocate, playfully fighting with
Offred’s mother. But it wasn’t all joking: Offred’s mother
talked about how young people didn’t understand the
sacrifices of earlier feminists, and cried about how lonely
she’d been.

Offred feels that her mother put a burden on her to justify Offred herself wasn’t such a feminist as her mother or Moira,
her mother’s choices and existence. But although they had showing both independence and a distaste for being
a rocky relationship, in the present day Offred only longs controversial.
to have everything just like it was.

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 CHAPTER 21
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Back at Janine’s birth room, there’s a stuffy, bloody, For once, Offred doesn’t fret so much about a small act of
animalistic smell. The Handmaids chant breathing rebellion, and asks after Moira without worrying that the other
instructions. They pass cups of grape juice to each other Handmaid might be an Eye. This demonstrates the rare feeling
and manage to whisper to each other as they do so. of freedom and community on birth days.
Offred asks the Handmaid next to her if she knows Moira,
but she doesn’t. Offred, too, feels pain like she’s about to
give birth, as Aunt Elizabeth taught the Handmaids to do.

Janine walks around distractedly, and poops in a portable Despite all the pleasant symbols of fruits and flowers, the
toilet in the middle of the room. Offred knows this is her actual scene of birth is crude, intimate, and risky. The Handmaid
second baby. Their juice had alcohol in it, which the Wives system seems to break down into ridiculousness. It’s clear
will pretend not to notice. Janine starts to scream and who’s doing the work, and who’s faking, and yet Gilead
Aunt Elizabeth prepares the two-seat birthing stool. The attempts to deny the reality of the situation, to create a
Wife of Warren comes in and sits on the upper seat, ceremony that allows the Wives to assert an emotional bond
apparently conscious of the Handmaid’s hostility towards with the baby while the Handmaid is treated as just a body.
her.

The Handmaids feel as though they are one with Janine as For the first time, Offred willingly and effortlessly enters into
the baby comes out. The baby, a girl, seems to be healthy exactly the state of mind that Gilead wants her to. The joy and
and normal, and the Handmaids smile as one. Offred community of the moment make Gilead seem temporarily
remembers her and Luke’s joy when she gave birth to her utopian.
daughter.

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Warren’s Wife lies on the bed holding the baby, and the The spell quickly breaks as Gilead’s hierarchies return. Janine
other Wives crowd enviously around. Warren’s Wife won’t be able to love her baby, but will be shuffled along to
names the baby Angela. Meanwhile, the Handmaids block more duty. The scene demonstrates how society, not biology,
Janine’s view of the bed, as Janine cries. After a few determines family and reverence.
months of nursing she’ll change households, and for her
good work she won’t be called an Unwoman and brought
to the Colonies.

The Birthmobile brings the Handmaids back home. Offred This short but important passage again melds feminism and
feels fake milk in her breasts. Offred ponders her own lack Gilead, and shows that neither is purely good or evil.
of success. She thinks of her mother, who “wanted a
women’s culture,” which has in a way been achieved.

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 CHAPTER 22
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

After the Birth, Offred goes to her room, exhausted. Today Though Offred tends to hate Janine, her body sympathizes with
the plaster wreath around the plaster eye in her ceiling Janine’s post-partum exhaustion, suggesting that their common
looks like a hat with a garland of flowers and fruits. She gender and position may override their differences.
briefly thinks of the kind of exhaustion that occurs after
driving all night, then forces herself into a happier
memory.

Offred flashbacks to Moira’s great escape from the Rachel Though Offred tends to worry about who’s a true believer or an
and Leah Center. (This escape was Moira’s second Eye and who’s a faker, she seems to have confidence in her
attempt, after the failed first, when she faked assessment of Janine, suggesting that Offred may see some of
appendicitis.) Offred knows the story indirectly, on a chain her own passivity and obedience reflected in Janine. Offred’s
that originated with Aunt Lydia telling Janine. Offred passionate hatred of Janine suggests as much, as it may be an
imagines how Aunt Lydia would have told Janine the expression of a kind of self-hatred for her own passivity.
story, thinking that Janine had become a true believer.
Offred, however, thinks that Janine wasn’t a true believer,
merely so abused that she would do anything for anyone.

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Moira had managed to block a toilet, and called Aunt Offred takes time to remember the details of the story, which
Elizabeth to see what was the matter. When Aunt evidently give her great pleasure. At the same time, though
Elizabeth came into the bathroom and knelt to fix the thoughts of Moira’s rebellion may help Offred cope with her
toilet, Moira threatened her with a metal spike from the current situation, they might also make Offred more docile,
toilet’s flushing mechanism. Moira took Aunt Elizabeth’s allowing her to live in her own memories rather than rebel in
cattle prod and whistle and hurried her into the furnace real life.
room. Aunt Elizabeth was afraid for her life and didn’t
scream. Moira took Aunt Elizabeth’s clothes, gagged and
bound Aunt Elizabeth, and managed to escape the Center
without scrutiny from the guards.

Offred imagines that Aunt Lydia told Janine to find out if Despite the possibility that Moira’s rebellion may have had the
Moira had an accomplice. Janine told one other Handmaid counterintuitive effect of keeping the other Handmaids docile,
and the story spread. The Handmaids found the story this passage illustrates the importance of storytelling,
frightening as they were getting used to the confinement communication and hope.
of the Rachel and Leah Center. Still, Moira’s ability to
disappear was a secret source of strength for the
Handmaids. Moira never reappeared.

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 CHAPTER 23
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Back in the present time, Offred muses about how all of This is a crucial passage for understanding the role of memory
her memories are “reconstructions.” If she ever manages in the novel. Offred links memory and forgiveness. When you
to escape and tell her story, that too will be a can’t remember the horrible specifics, you’re more likely to
reconstruction, even further separated from the original forgive—and when you forgive atrocities, you allow others to
events. Offred thinks about the impossibility of have power. Perhaps all of her memories of Aunt Lydia aren’t
remembering and telling anything perfectly. She thinks brainwashing, but an obsessive desire not to forget and forgive.
that maybe her biggest concern isn’t who has control, but
who can do terrible things and still be forgiven for them.
At the end of all these thoughts, Offred tells us that the
Commander asked her to kiss him.

Offred backs up into an explanatory flashback. Still on the Offred both longs for connection and longs to be put in her
day that Janine gave birth, Offred wakes from her nap place. She’s worried about disappointing others, but she was
when Cora brings dinner. Cora is happy about the healthy afraid to take the doctor’s offer.
baby and hopeful that Offred will have one too. Offred
wishes that Cora were disapproving instead.

At nine pm, Offred goes to meet the Commander in his Offred is more willing to rebel when someone instructs her to
office, as Nick previously instructed her. Offred is do so—she’s risk averse. The Commander can’t turn her in
powerfully aware of the illegality of this action, and how without implicating himself.
Serena Joy would punish her. Still, Offred knows that she
now has some amount of power over the Commander.

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The Commander’s study is filled with books. The The Commander’s posing is a reminder of pre-Gilead
Commander has posed himself impressively in front of the masculinity and courtship. In a funny twist, the Commander
fireplace. When he says hello to Offred, she feels she rebels not by taking advantage of Offred, but by being more
might cry. The Commander is friendly and sits across from gentlemanly and friendly than Gilead would allow. It appears
her, showing that he’s not going to take physical that nearly all the people in Gilead, even those in power, wish
advantage of her. The Commander finally says that he for a degree of human connection that Gilead’s rules won’t
wants to play Scrabble with Offred. allow.

Offred finds this hysterical, but she keeps herself Offred’s fusing of two wonderful things, reading and delicious
expressionless. She understands that this once innocent candy, is a positive version of her previous, more tragic fusing of
game is now illegal, as risky as a drug. And she knows Nick and Luke or tulips and blood. She categorizes the world
that the Commander can’t play with Serena Joy. They play based on highly personal emotion.
two games—she wins the first, then lets him win. Offred
loves the feeling of freedom and of using the letters,
which she imagines as tasting delicious.

At the end, the Commander thanks Offred and asks her to Why does Offred want to tell the story in a way that suggests
kiss him. Offred considers following Moira’s lead and she’s more violent and the Commander’s more emotional than
making a weapon out of the toilet mechanism and killing they really are? Maybe because she’s ashamed of her
the Commander next time. Then Offred confesses that she obedience. Maybe because she doesn’t want to think that the
only pictured such violence afterwards, during her kiss meant nothing. The passage shows how Offred creates the
reconstruction. At the time, she gives the Commander a experience she wants later, through memory.
close-mouthed kiss, and he asks for one that seems more
meaningful, and looks sad. But then Offred says again
that this is just a reconstruction.

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 CHAPTER 24
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred goes back to bed, trying to get some perspective. Though Gilead oppresses women, this memory of Aunt Lydia
We learn for the first time some basic facts about her: suggests that the women don’t respect men. Aunt Lydia
she’s thirty-three, five foot seven, and brown-haired. indicates that the men are unintellectual, more like animals
Offred realizes she now has the power to ask the ruled by crude desires. Offred’s recent encounter with the
Commander for some things. She remembers Aunt Lydia Commander seems to contradict this attitude, though she
suggesting, but never saying outright, that “men are sex doesn’t understand the motive of his actions.
machines” and the Handmaids should learn to steer them.
Offred finds the whole situation with the Commander
funny, though she knows it could change her life’s course,
for better or for worse.

Offred remembers a documentary about World War II that Offred’s strong memory of the makeup nods to the importance
she saw as a child. Her mother tried to explain that it was she attaches to self-preservation and putting on a good
all true, but Offred was too young and still thought it was appearance. (It also recalls Offred’s use of the butter in Chapter
“only a story.” Offred particularly remembers the mistress 17.) Offred is aligned with the Nazi’s wife—she’s seeing the
of a Nazi concentration-camp supervisor, who said she human side of a powerful and probably evil man. The anecdote
didn’t know about the mass extermination taking place may serve as a warning to Offred not to believe too many nice
just next to her house. The elderly, dying mistress, things about the Commander, even as she tells herself stories
wearing a lot of makeup, said in the interview that her that make him seem more caring.
lover was not a monster. Offred imagines in detail how
sweet and normal the Nazi’s behaviors might have
seemed. Right after the interview for the documentary, the

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mistress killed herself. Offred mainly remembers the
makeup.

All of a sudden, Offred starts laughing uncontrollably. She Though earlier Offred thought of her body as betraying her by
desperately tries to be quiet, hiding herself in the closet, not getting pregnant (Chapter 13) or hated her body for
her laughter erupting violently like red lava. In the closet determining her (Chapter 12), now she finds steadiness in it.
she thinks about “Nolite te bastardes carborandorum” and
listens to her own heartbeat.

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 CHAPTER 25
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred wakes suddenly when Cora drops the breakfast Though Cora’s concern and slight rule-breaking may seem like
tray. She’d fallen asleep in the closet, which greatly exceptional kindness, her interest above all in Offred’s fertility
alarms Cora for some reason. Offred lies and says she situation suggests that she’s just another of the many in Gilead
must have fainted in the closet, which makes Cora excited who care about Offred only for her body and what it can do.
about it being an early sign of pregnancy. Offred and Cora
decide that it’s less suspicious just to lie that Cora
dropped the tray on her way out. Offred is pleased that
Cora is willing to deal with Rita’s displeasure on her
behalf.

The narrative jumps forward. All the previous action took Serena is the destroyer of the plants’ fertility, making them
place in May, and now it’s summertime, and the tulips are useless to pass on genes, so they will be more beautiful. Since
gone. Returning from a grocery trip, Offred sees Serena Offred and the tulips are symbolically linked via color, it’s
Joy cutting off the tulips’ seed pods, destroying the fruit to almost as though Serena Joy is attacking Offred. Serena’s
make next year’s flowers better. Offred wishes she had actions also symbolically describe her own role: to be beautiful
the shears. for her husband, but not to bear a baby.

Offred thinks more about the garden, the irises and Despite Serena Joy’s violent attempts to control the flowers,
bleeding hearts that seem so feminine and dramatic that Offred sees how the natural world of the garden is at odds with
she finds them “subversive.” The flowers manage to break Gilead’s rigidity. An innocent hobby to occupy the Wives may
through the earth and make themselves known, and the be unexpectedly rebellious.
whole atmosphere is romantic and luxurious. Offred

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continues to enjoy tempting the checkpoint guards, and
wishes for winter to keep her in check.

Offred and the Commander continue to meet in secret, Offred’s predicament illustrates how Gilead hasn’t created a
when Nick signals, either by polishing the car when Offred “women’s culture,” as Offred imagines in Chapter 21. Instead,
walks by, or wearing his hat incorrectly. Offred finds it Gilead manages to divide women through hierarchy and
difficult to sneak around Serena Joy, and sometimes can’t jealousy. Offred and Serena Joy hate each other, not the system
make the appointments. Sometimes Serena Joy goes out that forced them into these roles.
at night to visit sick Wives. For the Wives, being sick is
fun, but sick Handmaids and Marthas mysteriously
disappear.

At first Offred found the Commander’s requests funny and It’s fitting that the first thing the Commander gives Offred to
anticlimactic, compared to the sexual perversions she’d read is a fashion magazine, a manual on a type of femininity
expected. At their second meeting, they played more that no longer exists, that Gilead and the Commander himself
Scrabble and Offred realized that he’d let her win at the as a leader of Gilead eliminated. Vogue exemplifies both the
last meeting. Then the Commander gave Offred a Vogue freedoms and the stresses on pre-Gilead women. It is important
magazine to read. Before Gilead, Offred hadn’t cared to note that pre-Gilead women also had ideals to conform to—
much for these magazines, but now she desperately ideals communicated by Vogue and culture, though not
wanted to read it. enforced by the government.

At first, Offred turned down the Vogue, but the The word “naughty” connotes something playful, flirty and
Commander said that she was allowed to read it. Offred childlike. Though the consequences of this rebellion could be
notes the almost masculine confidence of the serious, here we see Offred taking Gilead’s rules lightly.
supermodels, and their makeup. Though Aunt Lydia would
find this evil, Offred just finds it “naughty.”

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Offred asked why the Commander had saved a magazine The Commander’s belief that some people could break Gilead’s
that should have been burned, and the Commander said rules shows that he also takes the government lightly—even
that certain people could keep what the masses shouldn’t. though he played a role in creating it. He may be elitist, but he
After he sadly said that he didn’t have anyone else to also understands the importance of having some freedoms.
show it to, Offred boldly suggested that he could have He’s certainly hypocritical, but honest about his issues.
shown it to Serena Joy. The Commander explained that he
and his wife didn’t communicate, and Offred understood
why the Commander wanted to see her instead.

At their third meeting, Offred requested lotion. The Strangely, the Commander wasn’t even aware of Offred’s
Commander laughed at the fact that she’d been using treatment. This suggests that the lack of empathy between
butter, and she felt angry. He gave her the lotion four days characters may not be because of personal hatreds, but
later, and she explained that she couldn’t keep it in her because the structure of Gilead is so opaque that no one knows
room. The Commander hadn’t even realized the degree to each other’s experiences.
which the Handmaids were spied on, and Offred became
angry explaining it to him. But he told her she could keep
the lotion in his office.

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 CHAPTER 26
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred found the next Ceremony awkward in a new way. The Commander isn’t the first man for whom Offred has been a
Before, she and probably the Commander too both mistress. Luke was also married when they began their
managed to drift absent-mindedly through it, but now relationship, and that time, Offred did it for love, not because
Offred felt, for the first time, self-conscious and shy about she had to follow the whims of her superior. Perhaps now
her body. Offred’s feelings towards Serena Joy changed Offred doesn’t need to feel guilty, since she must do what the
too, moving from pure hatred to jealousy and even guilt. Commander wants. Or perhaps Offred is in the wrong, selfishly
Offred enjoyed her small power over Serena Joy, but knew focusing on her own love and life. It is interesting though how
that if Serena Joy found out, or if the Commander were Gilead would describe Offred’s relationship with Luke as a sin
slightly careless, she would be horribly punished. At one punishable by death but officially sanctions and creates her
point during the Ceremony the Commander seemed to current almost identical “mistress” situation. Gilead’s issue
want to touch Offred’s face, and later she warned him to seems not to be with a woman serving as a mistress, but a
be careful, teasing him a little. woman having the choice to act in a way she pleases.

Offred remembers Aunt Lydia talking about future Aunt Lydia again proves her prowess at presenting Gilead as an
generations, when the population will rebound and there improvement over the former world. Her words show how she
will be enough Handmaids to stay in each household and presents Gilead as a “women’s culture,” as Offred imagines in
live like a family. Aunt Lydia says that it’s freer when Chapter 21.
women work together to run the home, and that in the
future each Handmaid might have her own garden.

Offred feels that she’s become a traditional-type mistress Offred never goes so far as saying she loves the Commander,
to the Commander. She thinks that maybe Serena Joy but this passage shows how much she cares about
even knows about it and lets it happen to take away some

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of the burden of being the wife. Offred is happier than relationships. She even tries to justify away her guilt about
before, now that she’s interested in the Commander and Serena Joy.
that he sees her as a person.

CHAPTER 27
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred and Ofglen go shopping on a hot summer day. Unlike the flourishing gardens, the fish population seems to
They pass the fish store, and Offred thinks that most fish have suffered from environmental problems, just like the
might be extinct. Offred remembers how, before Gilead, humans. The past is present everywhere to Offred.
there was an ice cream store on the street where she used
to bring her daughter.

Offred and Ofglen have become more familiar, and Ofglen It’s symbolically rich that the anti-intellectual Gilead has taken
is slightly more outgoing. The Wall is empty of bodies, but over Harvard’s campus. But the murals that Offred describes
still frightening for its potential. When there are bodies really do exist in Widener Library at Harvard, highlighting that
Offred checks to make sure none of them could be Luke. Gilead and the real world are both violent and nationalistic.
Offred thinks about the university campus, now belonging
to the Eyes. She imagines the murals of Victory and Death
inside of the main library.

The two Handmaids pass a chain store called Soul Scrolls. The Soul Scrolls concept shows how far the seemingly God-
Customers, including Serena Joy, can remotely order one based theocracy has deviated from meaningful religion. Praying
of five prayers, which the machines pronounce aloud and is impersonal, mechanical and transactional—yet the medieval
print onto paper, in an entirely automated process. In the Catholic Church also encouraged its constituents to get
window glass, Ofglen makes eye contact with Offred. “indulgences” with cash.
Ofglen wonders in a whisper to Offred if God cares about

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the prayers, a dangerous and rebellious question. Offred
says no, allying herself with Ofglen’s blasphemy.

Offred and Ofglen continue to talk. Ofglen seems Before this scene, we’d only seen signs of individual rebellions,
knowledgeable about where and how it’s safe to talk. such as Moira’s escape, or Offred’s flight with her family. The
Both Handmaids admit that they thought the other was a organized Resistance shows that Gilead doesn’t have mind
true believer. Offred is very happy to learn that Ofglen’s a control over everyone as well as it seems to over Offred. Some
rebel. Then Ofglen offers Offred a chance to “join us,” and people are willing to risk more to achieve more.
Offred learns for the first time that there’s a secret,
organized Resistance. Offred briefly worries that Ofglen is
a spy, but allows herself to hope. Soon they have to stop
talking because of the crowds.

Offred and Ofglen fearfully watch the approach of a black This scene both reinforces Gilead’s danger and control, and
van with the winged eye symbol painted on it. Two Eyes shows Offred’s lack of empathy towards other rebels. She cares
come out, grab a man on the street, somehow knock him most about saving herself.
out, and put him in the van. Offred is glad that they didn’t
come for her.

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 CHAPTER 28
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred sits at the window of her room, still excited about This complex and important passage illustrates how everyone
her encounter with Ofglen. She’s been given an electric in the story is hypocritical, with no one fully good or evil.
fan, and she imagines that Moira would know how to Though Offred’s actions with Luke or the Commander may not
make it into a weapon. Moira would probably dislike be morally correct, desire for human connection and love (at
Offred’s deal with the Commander, since she thought any cost) is universal.
Offred was wrong to take Luke from another woman. On
the other hand, Moira liked women and didn’t mind
stealing them.

Offred delves into a specific memory of talking to Moira in In this passage, too, it’s unclear who’s right and who’s wrong.
Offred’s kitchen. Offred worked at an insurance company We might fault Offred for being uninvolved in the struggle for
and lived in a run-down house. She told Moira that she women’s rights, but Moira’s radicalism hardly seems like the
couldn’t create a perfect life just by ignoring men. Moira solution.
disagreed, and the friends laughed that they sounded like
Offred’s mother.

Later, Offred moved to a better apartment for two years Offred spent two years of her life waiting for Luke, showing
until Luke got his divorce. She worked digitizing a library, both the passion and patience of her great love for him, and
sometimes saving the books that were destined to be also her willingness to let his needs dictate hers. She let men
shredded. Back in the current time, Offred ponders the control her even when it was for love, even when it was her
strange fact that millions of women used to have jobs. She choice. The passage echoes Offred’s struggles with waiting in
thinks about the old dollar bills, no longer in existence. Chapter 13.

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Offred thinks that the lack of paper money made it easier Finally, more than halfway through the novel, Offred reveals
for the Gilead authorities to take power. After an unnamed the origins of Gilead. The Gileadean leaders scapegoated one
“catastrophe,” the Gilead leaders killed the president and religion while planning to impose their own type of fanaticism,
Congress, and “Islamic fanatics” got the blame. The army, disguising their extremism as something familiar.
in a state of emergency, said that it had to temporarily
stop using the Constitution. Offred was shocked at the
sudden collapse of the government, but Moira understood
that there were deeper goals than chaos.

The Gilead authorities began to make changes in the Gilead’s inoffensive, conservative shutdowns of the porn
name of security, such as shuttering newspapers, adding industry seem like something that Offred’s mother and her
roadblocks, and closing down “Pornomarts” and “Feels on feminist friends would agree to. Yet even these modest,
Wheels vans.” Generally people accepted these agreeable shutdowns represent a loss of freedom. The text
measures, feeling safe. But one September day, when suggests that it’s better to have freedom and ugliness than
Offred and Luke had been married for years and their neither.
daughter was three or four, Offred found that her money
card for her Compucount didn’t work anymore, despite her
thousands in the bank.

Later that day, Offred’s boss at the library, seeming This passage raises questions of self-preservation and blame.
unbalanced and distracted, fired her and all the other The boss acted just like Offred does now, following the rules
female employees, saying the law required him to. In the to save his life. But Gilead succeeded because of the
hall outside were two men with machine guns. The selfishness and cowardice of human nature.
women were confused but didn’t rally or try to fight back.
Offred thought that she and the others even felt ashamed.

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Offred returned home, restless and nervous. She managed Though Moira, at first, seems excited to resist Gilead, we see
to reach Moira, who had been working for a women’s in her escape from the Rachel and Leah Center a similar form
publishing company. Moira came over, and explained that of selfishness. Unlike Ofglen, she doesn’t take part in an
every woman’s bank account had been suspended, and organized Resistance—even though, before Gilead, she was
their money transferred to male family members. Moira an activist for women’s rights. She just tries to save herself.
seemed happy and determined. Moira understood that, if
the new government hadn’t made it impossible, all the
women would be trying to leave the country.

Offred picked up her daughter, and Luke came home. He As usual, Luke comes off as both loving and slightly too
tried to comfort Offred by saying that the measures were carefree. On the other hand, Offred didn’t mind when he
temporary and “it’s only a job,” but Offred felt he didn’t argued about feminism with her mother (Chapter 20). Offred,
understand, and he was even being patronizing. She like Luke, cares most about causes when they affect her
pointed out that he got all her money. When she personally.
described the scene of her firing to him, she realized that
the army men with machine guns didn’t belong to the US
Army.

There were only small protest marches, quickly controlled Though Gilead uses many subtler techniques to implement its
by the army shooting all the protesters. There were also government, clearly the most effective one is violence. But
some bombings, but maybe the army set them off too. violence isn’t very convincing. There may be fewer true
Luke encouraged Offred not to go protest, and she didn’t, believers than Offred thinks.
and became a stay-at-home housewife. Offred and others
were afraid to say anything that might get them reported.

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Offred goes into a further-back memory, from when she Offred’s opinion of this memory is unclear. Does she scorn the
was a teenager. She remembered her mother coming back feminists for not being more combative when Gilead
from a march perhaps about abortions, with noisy, appeared? Or does she sympathize with them?
combative female friends whom Offred found annoying.
Offred used to wish her mother would be less brazen. But
now Offred misses her.

Back in the present time, Offred watches Nick go out into Though Offred often lacks empathy for others, she eagerly
the garden, and admires his body. She sees his hat is imagines herself into Nick’s mind here. She evidently has a
askew, which means Offred will see the Commander crush—and love, in whatever form, takes Offred out of her
tonight. Offred wonders what Nick thinks of her trysts selfishness.
with the Commander, and if he imagines that Offred and
the Commander are having depraved sex.

Offred remembers back to the day she lost her job, when Though Offred sees losing her job as the turning point, we
Luke wanted to have sex and she didn’t. Offred felt that might suspect that the balance of power had never been
the balance of power had shifted, that he still had equal, given that she was Luke’s mistress, and she had to wait
everything that she had lost, that she was his possession, around for him. Gilead merely made her more aware of this
and that he might even like the way that events had implicit inequality.
turned. But she never asked him. From her faraway
position, she asks Luke if she was right.

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 CHAPTER 29
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred plays Scrabble in the Commander’s office, at ease When Offred talks about the Commander, she is particularly
in her chair, perfecting the scene by imagining a fire in the upfront about her storytelling impulse to improve and
fireplace. She finds the Commander father-like, and embellish. This indicates both an improved sense of creativity
maybe even friendlier than Luke. Still, she wonders the (maybe stemming from the books she’s finally allowed to
goal of his kindness. He allows her to read magazines and read) and a sense of disappointment or shame that she wants
even books by Charles Dickens or Raymond Chandler. But to disguise from her readers.
tonight she wants to talk to him about himself. He says he
used to be a market researcher and is now some kind of
scientist. Offred daringly asks him what “Nolite te
bastardes carborundorum” means, and writes it for him.

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The Commander says it’s only joke Latin, from his The origins of the rebellious-seeming phrase are a
schoolboy days. He shows Offred an old textbook with disappointment. The previous Handmaid isn’t so mysterious,
different Latin jokes, and explains that the phrase means and Offred’s relationship with the Commander isn’t so special.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Offred And yet it indicates that the Commander has long felt the
understands that the previous Handmaid must have need to break the rules of government he helped build in
learned the phrase from the Commander. order to share human connection.

Offred simply asks what became of “her,” and the Offred and the previous Handmaid seem to have a lot in
Commander knows what she’s asking. He says that the common. Both wanted some connection to each other
previous Handmaid hanged herself, which is why they (achieved via writing), and both considered suicide—though,
plastered over the place where there used to be a hanging for once, Offred’s passivity on this matter is reassuring.
light. Cora found her, and so Offred understands Cora’s
overreaction when Offred fell asleep in the closet.

Offred realizes that the Commander has been spending Offred has been concerned since the beginning about the
time with her to raise her spirits, so she won’t do the same Commander’s motives, but she seems disappointed to learn
as the previous Handmaid. Offred says that maybe she that they’re more about his feelings than a specific desire for
shouldn’t come to his office anymore. She realizes that his her. Yet Offred’s love for others (such as her mother at the end
own guilt is motivating this kindness. To discourage her of Chapter 28) also takes this form.
leaving, he asks what she wants, and she says she wants
to know what’s happening.

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 CHAPTER 30
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred sits by the window at night. She sees Nick in the Nick presents a new set of emotions for Offred. Instead of
garden, and he sees her in the window, a romantic being a mistress, now she’s the one cheating, on Luke’s
moment they can’t consummate. Offred knows that Nick memory. Now that she’s in the active position, she’s more
and Luke can’t be substituted for one another, and concerned about morality.
remembers Moira’s claim that people can’t control their
feelings but can control their behavior.

Offred remembers the night before her escape attempt Luke’s willingness to commit violence, even to help his
with Luke and their daughter. They couldn’t pack much, family, subtly suggests that he might fit in well as part of
which would be suspicious. Luke realized that they Gilead. Though at other times Offred is happy to offer
couldn’t take their cat or give her away, so he took her to “reconstructions,” such as in Chapter 23, she doesn’t want to
the garage and killed her. In retrospect, Offred knows the make up her family’s faces. In her most emotional moments,
cat died for nothing. She wonders who informed the she prefers accuracy to invention.
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 Aunt Lydia’s attentiveness to the superficial, visual quality of
and Leah Center, when Aunt Lydia would adjust the prayer echoes the Soul Scrolls of Chapter 27. Gilead uses the
Handmaids with a wooden stick so that they looked structure and rituals of religion, with none of the actual
perfect. The Handmaids prayed to be empty, so that they content. Religion becomes a means to power in general and
could be filled with fertility, and Janine would sometimes over women, rather than an end in itself.
get annoyingly excited.

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In the current time, Offred prays out the window. She In contrast to the previous passage, Offred offers a
acknowledges that God probably didn’t want all this, and legitimate, heartfelt prayer, acknowledging the emptiness of
hopes He prevents her family from suffering too much. the theocracy. In contrast to her selfish tendencies, she prays
Offred thinks about how she could still hang herself on for her loved ones, not for pregnancy or some other personal
one of the closet hooks. She imagines that God might be cause.
frustrated with the current situation. She wishes God
would respond, and she feels very alone.

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 CHAPTER 31
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

It’s a very hot July, and Offred feels listless and stiff, like Offred’s fantasy about Luke shows how (as in the plastic
an old woman. She wishes she could have a petty bag memory scene in Chapter 5) the boring, everyday facts
argument with Luke about some household chore, and of pre-Gilead life have become rare and therefore desirable.
passes time fantasizing about that. Today the chandelier’s
old spot looks like “a frozen halo” or a ripple.

Offred and Ofglen go shopping. There are two dead Harvard’s formerly single-sex education system illustrates
bodies on the Wall, killed for belonging to the wrong how the world of Gilead and the real world aren’t so far
religions. Many Jewish people, renamed Sons of Jacob by apart. The sexism in the novel, even the law that women
Gilead, were able to immigrate to Israel, but those who aren’t allowed to read, is unfortunately common in world
stayed and didn’t convert were being found and killed. history.
The two Handmaids walk past Harvard’s Memorial Hall,
which was once a student dining hall where, Moira once
told Offred, women weren’t allowed to eat.

Ofglen says the Eyes now eat at the hall. She tells Offred Offred now knows two secret methods of communication
about the Resistance movement’s password, “Mayday,” about rebellion: Mayday, and Nick’s hat. Little by little,
which Ofglen had once tried saying to Offred. The Offred strays from her formerly law-abiding, fearful ways.
password reminds Offred of spy novels. The Handmaids
return home, and Nick’s crooked hat signals to Offred that
she’ll have a nighttime meeting with the Commander.

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Serena Joy sits knitting in the garden, and calls to Offred For the first time, Serena Joy seems motherly and even
as she walks by. Serena Joy asks Offred to hold her wool, worthy of admiration. Offred’s amusing flashback to her
explaining that Offred needs air, because her room is “too mother’s fiddling with safety pins recalls Offred’s wish for a
damn close.” The curse surprises Offred. Offred respects more conventional mother. For a moment, it’s Serena Joy.
Serena Joy’s determination to knit, despite her arthritic
hands. Offred’s mother didn’t knit, but she made chains of
safety pins from the cleaners’.

Serena Joy tells Offred that she’s running out of time for a Serena Joy shows that she’s a rebel too, and a surprisingly
baby, and then daringly suggests that perhaps the altruistic one. Certainly she’s motivated by her own desire
Commander “can’t.” The women make eye contact, and for a baby, but her actions might save Offred’s life. Even her
Serena Joy suggests that Offred try with another man. idea of pairing Offred with attractive, friendly Nick is
Offred points out the illegality of such an action. Serena strangely selfless.
Joy continues, saying that Ofwarren (Janine) got pregnant
by a doctor, and Warren’s Wife knew. Serena Joy explains
she thought Nick might be suitable

. Offred asks about the Commander, and Serena Joy says Serena Joy’s desire to do even more for Offred, and to pull
it’ll be a secret. Offred says it’s risky, but agrees quickly. strings to convince her, shows how Serena Joy must
Serena Joy encourages Offred by offering to obtain a consider Offred truly obedient to Gilead. To us, Offred
picture of Offred’s daughter. Offred is powerfully angry seems to be an eager rebel, but she’s hidden that well.
and hopeful at once. Finally, after cursing about the
weather, Serena Joy gives Offred a cigarette and tells her
to get a match from Rita.

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 CHAPTER 32
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred gives Rita the groceries and asks for a match. Rita All of a sudden, the women who normally neglect Offred
is annoyed, but won’t disobey Serena Joy’s instructions. are changing their tunes. Unfortunately, this means that
Then Rita eats one of the ice cubes on the table, and offers Ofglen’s newfound friendship may diminish in importance
one to Offred in an unexpectedly friendly gesture. Offred to Offred. Why rebel when everyone’s so nice?
can’t wait to smoke her cigarette, but she realizes she
could also save the match, and burn down the house
someday.

Offred flashes back to the previous night. The Commander The Commander’s childlike position both references
drinks in front of her and then makes up words in Offred’s tragedy and the Commander’s innocence (or willful
Scrabble, or sits below her like a child. Ofglen told Offred blindness) about Gilead’s bad qualities. He may believe that
that he’s very high-ranking. Last night, the Commander in this new society men can feel again, but his relationship
explained to Offred that one of the problems before with his wife is failing and the sex is horrible.
Gilead was that the men didn’t have feelings anymore,
because sexual gratification was so easily obtainable, via
porn or prostitution. Now, he says, men can feel again.

The Commander asks for Offred’s opinion on what the The Commander’s explanation of Gilead leaves out religion.
Gilead has done. Offred says she has no opinion, but lets Religion was just a means to an end. He imagines that
him know her feelings by asking if he considers Gilead Gilead was founded to help men get over their sexual
“better.” The Commander explains that “you can’t make an issues—and he believes that’s a good reason! The
omelette without breaking eggs”—there will always be Commander’s explanation reveals his own anxieties, but
pros and cons. Back in the present time, Offred lies in bed,

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wishing for a thunderstorm, because then she could go be also demonstrates how sexism can come from fear of
afraid with Rita and Cora. She imagines the former women’s power, not just disdain for their weakness.
Handmaid hanging from the ceiling, safe from further
harm.

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 CHAPTER 33
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred and Ofglen walk to the Women’s Prayvaganza, and The childlike imagery of the Handmaids, all in uniform like
Offred is aware of how pleasantly identical they look. She students, is an abrupt reminder of the eggs that had to
remembers playing with dandelions with her daughter. break to allow the Commander and other men to have
The rows of women going through the checkpoint look feelings again. The new rules don’t just make women
like overgrown students. The Prayvaganza takes place in a powerless; they make them all like children.
courtyard on the Harvard campus. Ofglen tells Offred to
sit with her in the back, so they can talk.

Ofglen points out that Janine is with a new Wife, because As usual, Offred both hates Janine and has unusual, even
the baby girl turned out to be “a shredder.” Ofglen tells sympathetic, insight into her situation. Offred realizes that
Offred that Janine had sex with a doctor for the baby, and everyone wants to be in a story with a comprehensible plot.
now she thinks that she’s being punished for her sins. Offred’s storytelling allows her that artificial feeling.
Offred thinks that Janine reacted that way to avoid feeling
like her life is meaningless, like she isn’t in a story.

Offred goes into a flashback from the Rachel and Leah Janine’s form of rebellion isn’t active and considered like
Center. Janine sat on the bed in a trance, whispering Ofglen’s, but emotional and reflexive. Offred’s behavior is
greetings like a waitress. Moira slapped her to try to bring between those two extremes. She wants to be reasonable,
her back to the present, telling her that she’d get killed but she lacks Moira’s independent thinking.
right away for such behavior. Janine began to get dressed,
and Moira instructed Offred to make sure Janine stayed in
reality, because that behavior was “catching.”

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 CHAPTER 34
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Back in the present day, the Commander in charge of the Offred’s musing about how the next generation won’t know
Prayvaganza enters, and Offred imagines him having sex what life was like outside or before Gilead is thematically
with his Handmaid. The Commander gives a speech, and linked to the “Historical Notes” at the book’s end. People
then twenty blue-clad mothers give twenty white-veiled forget the past as easily as they lack empathy for one
daughters in arranged marriage to twenty Angels, who another, and even storytelling is of limited use to preserve
wear black. Offred thinks that soon, none of the experiences.
daughters will remember the liberties of the time before
Gilead, including reading and wearing comfortable
clothes.

Offred flashes back to an evening with the Commander, Offred thinks that lack of love is the most important issue
when he explained that Gilead actually made things with Gilead. Though the Commander thinks he’s defended
better for women. They no longer had to deal with the Gilead by defending arranged marriages (which in the real
hardships of finding a husband or fitting a certain beauty world as well may be even more successful than the
standard, and they didn’t have to worry about abusive unarranged ones), Gilead’s love problems go deeper. Even
husbands or getting by as single mothers. The within the marriages, the paranoia, strict hierarchy, and lack
Commander then asked Offred what the Gilead of freedom make love difficult, if not impossible.
authorities left out, and she said love. But the
Commander said arranged marriages statistically
succeed as well as love-based ones. Offred also
remembered Aunt Lydia disdaining love. The
Commander asserted that Gilead’s way was more
traditional and natural.

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Back at the Prayvaganza, Offred thinks about the women The nuns’ bravery in the face of torture demonstrates the
usually celebrate weddings, and the men celebrate difference between actual religion (which the novel
military victories. But some women’s Prayvaganzas supports) and the rigidness of theocracy. Despite
sometime happen when young nuns agree to become Catholicism’s gender rules, the nuns prove themselves to be
Handmaids. (Older nuns go to the Colonies.) The young as rebellious and brave as Moira.
nuns don’t seem to renounce their ways easily, since
they all bear signs of torture.

The Commander in charge of the Prayvaganza reads Offred’s wry imaginary advice shows the gap between the
from the bible about how women must be modest, silent, lofty Biblical passage and the wretched reality of Gilead. The
and kept under men’s authority, since Eve lead Adam whole Prayvaganza functions as a counterpoint to the
astray. He reads that women will “be saved by Commander’s assertion that, in Gilead, men can feel again.
childbearing.” The Angels lift off their new brides’ veils,
to see their faces for the first time. Offred imagines
advice to the young brides in dealing with the boring sex
to come.

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Offred goes into a Rachel and Leah Center flashback. Offred may be wrong to attribute the laughing-at-power
She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that the women idea to Moira—Offred’s been making fun of those in power
must work together, and then Moira making fun of her from the beginning of the book. Offred underestimates her
words in the bathroom, imagining that Aunt Lydia has own rebellious instincts, even though, as Moira points out,
made Janine into her sex slave. Offred wanted to laugh, she wimpily tries to hide it.
but acted serious, and Moira called her a wimp. Back at
the Prayvaganza, Offred realizes that Moira was right
that it does good to make fun of the powerful. She
imagines the embarrassing, unattractive sex between the
Angels and their new wives.

After the Prayvaganza, Ofglen whispers to Offred that Surprisingly, Offred is ashamed of her respectful, almost
she knows about Offred’s secret meetings with the egalitarian relationship with the Commander, so she gives
Commander. Ofglen is curious if they’re having illicit sex, Ofglen a different impression. She doesn’t want to
and Offred doesn’t confess what’s really happening, disappoint her rebellious new friend by seeming to be
since the Scrabble doesn’t have “the dignity of coercion.” agreeable to the Commander.
Ofglen tells Offred to use the meetings to learn anything
she can, and report back.

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 CHAPTER 35
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Back in her room, Offred goes back into the flashback of Offred has fragmented this story throughout the novel, but
her family’s failed attempt to cross the Canadian border. this is the missing piece, when she went from believing in her
They gave their fake passports, which covered up Luke’s escape from the growing Gilead to knowing it was doomed.
past divorce, to a border guard, and Luke got out of the Her withholding of this piece for last shows that her loss of
car to stretch and watch as Offred prayed. Then Luke got hope, even more than the moment they removed her
into the car and began to speed away, since he saw the daughter, is the most painful.
border guard telephoning someone. He stopped by the
side of the road, and Luke, Offred and their daughter ran
into the woods, desperately trying to evade capture.

Offred breaks off there, and addresses her audience These thoughts on storytelling contrast with Offred’s cynical
directly, saying that she doesn’t want to tell the story, thoughts about Janine’s desire to be in a story (Chapter 33).
and she could stop fighting and just retreat into herself. Before, twisting life into a story was giving up. Now, not
She thinks about the futility of the previous Handmaid’s telling the story is giving up.
Latin slogan. She switches track, getting into another
memory.

Offred thinks about her conversation with the Though Offred repeatedly mentions how she’s not sure if she
Commander about love, then muses more generally even has an audience, this passage makes clear how much
about falling in love. She thinks that it’s hard to she cares about her audience’s opinion, just like she cares
remember the feeling of being in love. She remembers about Ofglen’s opinion of her actions with the Commander.
being careful and worried about safety at night. She The passage also strongly links love and freedom.
remembers how easy it seemed to be proactive and

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change things when they weren’t good. Now she’s stuck
in time with Luke. She cries and asks the audience for
forgiveness for being so nostalgic.

Finally someone knocks at Offred’s door, but it’s Serena Offred’s conclusion that her daughter doesn’t remember or
Joy with a photo, not Cora with dinner. Offred examines care about her is also storytelling. A photo can’t reveal much,
the Polaroid of her daughter, looking tall in a white but Offred projects her fears of the worst. As in Chapter 12,
dress. Offred doesn’t see in the photo any signs that her she’d rather not hope for her daughter.
daughter has remembered her, and wishes that she
hadn’t seen the photo.

CHAPTER 36
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

At night, Offred goes to see the Commander, who seems Offred is excited to change from her modest robes (that
already drunk. He says he has a surprise for Offred, then nonetheless reveal her role as a sex worker) to an overtly
gives her a worn-looking skimpy sequined leotard. feminine, sexy outfit. Yet she’s more excited about the bold
Offred remembers seeing TV coverage of the bonfires to opportunity to rebel than about her opportunity to reclaim
destroy such clothing. He tells Offred to put it on as a her femininity.
disguise, so they can go out, and she’s excited to do
something so rebellious. He gives her some old makeup
to apply, and then a blue hooded cloak of Serena Joy’s.

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Nick drives Offred and the Commander. Offred can’t tell Still, as soon as Offred puts on makeup, she becomes more
what Nick thinks of all this, and imagines the self-conscious, aware of a new ideal. This demonstrates how
possibilities. The Commander has a pass to get Offred easily she slips into old habits. Her personality changes as
through the checkpoints. Then he makes Offred hide on quickly as her clothes. This supports, or at least makes non-
the car floor to a place where Wives are prohibited. They ridiculous, the Commander’s claim that women are actually
hurry through a back entrance, and Offred understands freer when they have fewer chances to modify their
that the Commander has been here before. The appearances.
Commander tells Offred to pretend she’s an “evening
rental,” and Offred wishes she could see how she
looked.

CHAPTER 37
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred and the Commander enter the courtyard of what The Commander’s assertion that the club looks like the past
used to be a hotel. There are women in a variety of sexy shows his misunderstanding of the pre-Gilead days. For him,
outfits, including pre-Gilead jogging gear, and they all the main difference between the two societies is the
wear makeup. The Commander thinks it looks like the women’s clothes (rather than the women’s rights and
past, but Offred finds that it feels very different. The freedom), illustrating his foolish and dangerous innocence.
Commander talks with other men, both showing Offred
off to them, and demonstrating his power to her.

The Commander and Offred sit down, and he asks her The Commander’s pseudo-scientific justification of male
opinion on “our little club.” Offred says she thought this desire echoes his earlier statements about how porn made
was illegal, but the Commander explains it’s necessary men unfeeling. In his view, men are powerless to control
because men naturally need different women. The

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Commander thinks that women used to wear different their sexuality and therefore must control women in order to
outfits to give their men that necessary diversity. control themselves.

The Commander tells Offred that the men are high- Given the Commander’s views that men have no self-control
ranking officials and foreign businessmen, and the over their sexuality, which reflects a fear of female power, he
women are some former prostitutes and some well- must enjoy seeing these high-achieving women debasing
educated women who chose this life. He flirtily asks themselves for him.
Offred if she’d prefer this, and she flirts back. He
encourages Offred to have a drink, and kisses her hand.

As Offred waits for her drink, she sees Moira across the Moira and Offred use their old gestures from the Rachel and
room, wearing a slutty and disheveled animal costume. Leah Center to communicate again. Moira’s presence here
She looks bored, scanning the room, and then sees seems like a crazy coincidence, but maybe Gilead is smaller
Offred and gestures that they should meet at the than it pretends to be.
bathroom in five minutes. When the Commander returns,
Offred heads for the bathroom, unsteady in her heels.

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 CHAPTER 38
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

An Aunt with a cattle prod tells Offred she has fifteen Offred mentally defends the Commander, showing that,
minutes. Offred enters a ladies’ lounge, with has a mirror, despite his foolish opinions, their odd relationship means
unlike at her house. Moira comes out of the bathroom something to her. Moira, on the other hand, seems hardened
and hugs Offred, with her familiar no-nonsense attitude. to life, callous and closed off to subtlety.
Moira has slept with Offred’s Commander before, and
says Commanders bring Handmaids as a “power trip,”
though Offred believes he has more complex reasons.

Moira tells Offred her story over two bathroom trips, and Offred’s speaking in Moira’s voice, complete with crude
Offred tries to tell it to her audience in Moira’s voice, expressions, shows how storytelling, for Offred, can also be
adding to the bare-bones version Moira told her. Moira a form of role-play. As it turns out, Moira’s pre-Gilead
explained that, after tying up Aunt Elizabeth, she left connections to activists and feminists did prepare her better
without a real plan, and managed to make it through the than most to deal with Gilead, since she located the
checkpoints faking an Aunt-style frown. She made her Resistance through them.
way to a Quaker household she remembered from her
feminist press’s mailing list, remarking that she might
have given away the names of all the people on the list
when she was tortured.

The Quaker couple let Moira in, and gave her clothes, Moira’s quest to get out (and her blunt acknowledgment of
although they were nervous keeping her since they had the helpers who died to help her) contrasts with Ofglen’s
two little children. They brought her to another Quaker quest to gather information about Gilead. Moira is not so
family that was part of the Underground Femaleroad. A selfless.

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post office worker helped Moira move to a new station,
and later was executed and displayed on the Wall.

Moira felt guilty that people were risking their lives for The hosts’ determination to help out for religious reasons,
her, but her hosts explained that they helped because of like the nuns’ bravery in Chapter 34, is another defense of
their religion. This was before Gilead started gathering the good that religion can do, when it’s not being twisted
up the Christian sects it disagreed with. Moira spent into a theocracy. The passage suggests that faith can lead to
eight or nine months on the Femaleroad and made it to real selflessness and even love. The strangers risked as
Maine, but for unknown reasons, someone tipped off the much for Moira as Luke and Offred did for each other.
authorities and they came for Moira and the couple
helping her. Moira remembered how Aunt Lydia enjoyed
torturing her. In the Eyes’ van, Moira wanted to commit
suicide but was unable.

They brought Moira to some other place that she doesn’t It’s fitting that men must wear dresses in the Colonies, which
want to talk about. After torture, they showed Moira a symbolically strip them of their biological superiority. The
video about the Colonies. At some Colonies, women Colonies have come up throughout the book, sometimes
must burn dead bodies. At others, people have to clean seeming like a not-so-terrible alternative to Handmaid life,
up toxic waste or radiation, and since it’s cheaper not to but only now are their horrors revealed. They’re death
feed the workers well or give them proper protection, camps, echoing the Holocaust.
they all die in around three years. There might be other
Colonies that are more like regular farms, but Moira
didn’t hear about them. The women in the Colonies are
either old women, failed Handmaids, or rebels. Men
make up a quarter of the population. Everyone (even
men) wears gray dresses.

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Moira picked Jezebel’s over the Colonies. She’ll manage In Chapter 34, Offred remembers Moira making fun of Janine
to stay there three or four years before her “snatch wears for acting like a prostitute. Now, Moira has given in to her
out,” and she can have alcohol and drugs. Here Offred position and given up hope. Though opportunities for suicide
interjects, shocked at Moira’s listlessness. She’s lost her seem to abound, Moira prefers this purgatory of easy
essential spark and bravery, and Offred feels she’s lost a pleasures—she still has her crassness, but she no longer has
hero. Moira makes a joke about the club being “butch hope. She has chosen a drab life of being used over rebellion
paradise,” to make Offred feel better. or death.

Offred wishes she could tell her audience a story about Offred generally avoids these dramatic flash-forwards,
Moira managing to escape or blowing up Jezebel’s. But preferring flashbacks. This sudden reveal makes the tragedy
Offred doesn’t know what became of Moira, since they especially shocking.
never saw each other again.

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 CHAPTER 39
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

The Commander brings Offred up to a hotel room at Offred’s mother always appears in videos at the right time—
Jezebel’s. Offred uses the bathroom and flashes back to she also showed up in a feminist protest video in Chapter 20.
her conversation with Moira. Moira saw Offred’s mother This seeming coincidence, like re-encountering Moira, may
in one of the videos about the Colonies, which Moira indicate either that Offred’s mother was an important enemy,
thinks is a fate worse than death. Offred flashes back or that Gilead is smaller and weaker than it pretends.
further, unable to remember the last time she saw her
mother. It would have been a casual encounter at
Offred’s apartment. When the situation got worse,
Offred tried to call her mother, to no response.

Offred spoke to the superintendent of her mother’s Apparently, Offred’s mother was a particular target of
apartment, and then Luke drove her over to check the Gilead. Offred’s naïve desire to call the police shows her
place. They opened up the apartment and found willingness to do anything for a loved one.
evidence that it had been violently searched. Offred
wanted to call the police, but Luke told her not to.

Offred remembers how, during college, Moira said she As she did at the end of Chapter 38, Offred falls into a rare
thought Offred’s mother was “neat” and even “cute.” moment of hopelessness. She has Ofglen, and soon Nick, to
Now Offred imagines her mother cleaning up toxic talk to and rebel with, but her old life is vanishing.
waste. She wants to believe that her mother will manage
to get out, but knows that she won’t.

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Back at the hotel, Offred looks in the mirror at her messy, Though in previous meetings Offred enjoyed her time with
garish outfit. Tomorrow’s the Ceremony, so she must be the Commander (and even felt embarrassed to admit to
back by midnight to have her first sex with Nick. She Ofglen that they weren’t having sex), now that they do have
exits the bathroom and joins the Commander on the bed. sex, her positivity is gone. Despite his bad behavior, here the
He touches Offred, but she just asks why he brought her. Commander comes off as tragic and pitiable.
He says it’s because she claimed to want to know. He
takes off his shirt, which Offred finds sad. She doesn’t
respond to him, and sees he’s “dismayed and no doubt
disappointed.” She tries to fake arousal.

CHAPTER 40
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred lies in her hot bedroom, dressed again in her red This scene demonstrates the differences between Serena
robe. The searchlights are off, fortunately or maybe on Joy’s and the Commander’s forms of rebellion. The
purpose. Serena Joy comes at midnight and leads her Commander is all about his own immediate gratification and
through the house, and gives her instructions on getting fun, while Serena Joy has longer-term, less selfish goals.
to Nick’s apartment over the garage. Offred wonders
what measures Serena Joy has taken against the night
Guardians. Offred knocks on Nick’s door and he answers.

Nick’s room is unadorned and military-seeming. He Offred’s immediate arousal contrasts with her dismal time
smokes a cigarette and Offred wants to get naked to with the Commander at Jezebel’s. It all seems too good to be
enjoy the smoke. He turns out the light and takes off true.
Offred’s dress, and she is overwhelmed with love and
passion.

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Offred backs up, saying “I made that up.” She gives us And it is too good to be true. As with her meetings with the
the real version of events. Nick opened the door and Commander, Offred feels the need to tell a “better” story (at
offered her a drag of his cigarette. He looks at her least a more conventionally romantic one) than the one that
seriously and she feels judged, “stupid and ugly.” When occurred. She feels some debt to her audience for listening to
she says they should hurry, he says he could just all her thoughts. At the same time, Offred is honest about
masturbate into a bottle. She tries to be sympathetic to her falsehood, ultimately preferring the embarrassing truth.
the difficulty, and he says he gets paid. They quote old
movies, and Offred starts crying. He comforts her, brings
her to the bed and kisses her, telling her “no romance,”
which means they shouldn’t sacrifice themselves for one
another. They did the deed and Offred made shameful
noises.

Offred says it wasn’t like that either, that she can only Offred’s claims about love may seem cynical, but they also
hope to make a reconstruction and “the way love feels is indicate that love is such a special experience that she can’t
always approximate.” During the sex, she imagined even properly feel or express it without resorting to the
Serena Joy judging her for being easy. Afterward, she felt expected clichés.
she’d betrayed Luke by responding so enthusiastically.

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 CHAPTER 41
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred wishes her story made her seem better, “more As she did in Chapter 23, Offred removes herself from her
active, less hesitant,” and wishes it had more about love story to comment on her storytelling. She emphasizes that
and pleasant things. She apologizes for her painful and the story is for others, an act of communication, not just a
disjointed story. She hopes others will hear her story, way for her to pass time.
and she will hear others’, and she imagines an audience
into existence.

Offred describes how she started to spend a lot of time When Offred falls in love, nothing else is important. The
with Nick, without Serena Joy’s endorsement. She did it selfishness that has always been a part of her comes out
for selfish reasons, always thankful to him for receiving full force, as does her desire to subject herself to a man’s
her. She sometimes went over just after seeing the whims, always asking for permission. She even makes Nick
Commander. She sketches out a typical Nick encounter. a kind of “reconstruction” by idolizing him. At the same
They have sex right away and talk afterward. She wishes time, Offred finally gets to communicate and have freedom.
she could see him in better light than just the searchlight, Though she thinks of herself as passive, she’s the one
and every time they have sex they do it like it’s the last knocking on his door.
time. Offred trusts Nick and tells him everything (except
about Luke), though she knows it might be dangerous.
Offred doesn’t want to know if he got with the previous
Handmaid. She feels like she’s made Nick into “an idol.”
He doesn’t talk much and seems nonchalant.

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On shopping trips, Ofglen encourages Offred to find out Though Offred has never been happier in Gilead, this
whatever she can and look through the Commander’s happiness leads to her most morally reprehensible
papers. But Offred barely pays attention to Ofglen, behavior. Instead of helping Ofglen, and by extension
distracted by thoughts of Nick. Offred tells Ofglen that helping more people experience freedom and love, she
she’s afraid of getting caught, but really she doesn’t prioritizes herself. As always in the novel, nothing is purely
want to escape anymore. She thinks she might be good or bad.
pregnant, and remembers that Cora seems to think so
too, suggesting that Cora might know about the
situation. Offred is relieved when Ofglen stops pushing
her to help with the Resistance.

CHAPTER 42
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

The Handmaids enter Harvard’s campus for a district An execution and a college graduation seem to be totally
Salvaging. They walk past Angels in riot gear and enter different - in every way. But from another point of view,
the quadrangle in front of the main library, where keeping in mind the “Historical Notes” at the book’s end,
graduations used to take place. Now there’s a stage with the novel may be critiquing the self-congratulatory
three nooses. Offred only attended a Women’s exclusivity and aloofness of academia.
Salvaging once before, two years ago. Two Handmaids
and one Wife are on the stage to be “salvaged.” They
may be drugged into complacency.

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Aunt Lydia comes onto the stage and Offred hates her. This scene illustrates the extent to which the Handmaids
She gives a speech about duty, and then announces that rely on rebellions, like Moira’s, to give them ideas to
she will not be explaining what the women on stage did fantasize about. At the same time, Aunt Lydia’s explanation
wrong, so as not to lead to copycat crimes. This upsets that the discussion of crimes might lead to more bad
the Handmaids, who like to know the kinds of crimes behavior could be encouraging because it shows that
they too could commit. The Handmaids might be there Gilead still lacks total control.
for attempted murder of their Commanders or Wives.
And the Wife may be there for attempted murder of a
Handmaid, adultery, or escape.

The Salvagers prepare to hang Ofcharles, and someone The Handmaids symbolically hang the women themselves,
behind Offred, maybe Janine, according to Ofglen, seems just as, in Chapter 13, they bond together to scold Janine.
to vomit. As the women is hanged, the Handmaids in the Gilead perversely uses peer pressure and herd mentality to
audience put their hands on a rope in the grass create unity among women, but for the purposes of policing
connected to a noose, to show that they’re taking part in and punishing others.
the execution.

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 CHAPTER 43
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred notices how the three hanged women look like Aunt Lydia’s attention to the beauty and presentation of the
dancers in the air. Aunt Lydia tells the Handmaids in the dead bodies recalls her arranging the Handmaids during
audience to form a circle, acting as though she’s giving prayers (Chapter 30). The beautiful simile of dancers
them a gift. The Handmaids get excited, and Ofglen pulls contrasts with the horror, much like how Offred sees the
Offred forward. Offred has a suspicion of what might corpses as children’s drawings in Chapter 6.
happen, but can’t quite believe it. Aunt Lydia explains the
minimalist Particicution rules—the women can do
whatever they want after she whistles.

The Guardians drag up a tortured-looking man. Aunt Surprisingly, the Handmaids seem to preserve a bit of
Lydia explains that he’s a rapist, and references the bible sympathy for the man, up until he tries to deny his actions.
to say that rapists should be punished by death. She Maybe this is because the Handmaids are well acquainted
says he raped two Handmaids, one of whom was with unwanted sex and men’s forceful desires, but not with
pregnant and whose baby died. Offred feels signs of weakness, like this man was showing.
overwhelmed with anger. Aunt Lydia blows the whistle,
but the Handmaids wait, watching his pathetic gestures,
and maybe even a little smile. He begins to say “I didn’t,”
but then the women attack. Ofglen goes first and kicks
him in the head.

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Offred yells at Ofglen for her actions, and Ofglen This encounter with Janine gets to the root of Offred’s
whispers to Offred that the man wasn’t a rapist, but a hatred for her. Offred envies Janine’s ability to go crazy,
member of the Resistance, and she was trying to make because it means that Janine can float in her own bubble
him unconscious. Aunt Lydia whistles again, but the above the situation, instead of engaging with it. However,
frenzy continues. Janine emerges, laughing and saying Offred often retreats into her own memories to cope as
lines from her waitress job, bloodstained and holding a well. In Janine, she sees what she fears about herself.
bit of the man’s hair. Offred is angry with Janine for
losing her mind, since it means that Janine doesn’t have
to deal sanely with the horrifying reality. When Offred
returns home, she’s hungry and wants to have sex.

CHAPTER 44
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred goes shopping. The Ofglen who accompanies her The loss of Ofglen shakes Offred out of her usual caution
isn’t the same one as before. Offred asks what happened and passivity. Despite her lack of interest in the Resistance
to Ofglen, and the new one only says that she is Ofglen. before, now she can’t wait to make another connection.
After picking up groceries, Offred suggests a trip to the
Wall. She tries to indicate subtly her opposition to the
regime, and comes up with a way to mention “Mayday.”

The new Ofglen does not respond well and warns Offred Ofglen’s death is a brutal reminder of the risks of the
off of saying such things. Offred becomes frightened and Resistance. Though Offred is our protagonist, Ofglen may
paranoid. But right when they part in front of her house, be the book’s hero, truly courageous and willing to sacrifice
the new Ofglen whispers to Offred that the old Ofglen herself for freedom.

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hanged herself when she saw the Eyes’ van approaching
for her.

CHAPTER 45
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred is relieved that the old Ofglen killed herself This is Offred’s conversion moment—the moment she
before torture, which means that Offred’s secrets are surrenders to Gilead and gives up hope, just as Moira did.
safe. Still, Offred wonders if the new Ofglen is telling She scorned Janine for her easy surrenders, but now her
the truth. Walking back indoors, past Nick, Offred panicked state resembles Janine’s.
begins to panic, praying that she’ll be the perfect
Handmaid, do anything that’s asked of her, so long as
she doesn’t have to suffer or die. Now she truly
understands Gilead’s power.

Serena Joy comes angrily out of the house, and Offred As at the Particicution or at the Rachel and Leah Center,
knows she’s in trouble for something, though she women are more likely to be punished by fellow women
doesn’t know what. Serena Joy shows her the blue than by men. Rather than bonding together, women take
cloak with makeup smeared on it, and the sequined part in Gilead’s sexist structure and oppress themselves.
leotard. Serena Joy orders Offred to go upstairs, and Serena Joy was willing to help Offred get pregnant and is
calls her a slut like the previous Handmaid. Offred willing (grudgingly) to allow Offred to have sex with the
realizes that Nick has stopped whistling. Commander for procreative purposes, but she sees Offred as
a slut as soon as she learns of Offred’s personal connection
to the Commander. It is not the sexual relationship that
Serena Joy hates, it’s the personal relationship. And Gilead
has transformed such relationships into criminal and
shameful things.

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 CHAPTER 46
SUMMARY ANALYSIS

Offred waits in her room, uncertain what her This passage highlights Offred’s ability to inhabit several
punishment will be. She imagines how she could try to different possibilities at once, though now we see that this
set fire to the house and kill herself that way, or how capacity may actually prevent her from pursuing any one
she could try to climb out the window, or go cry in front action. This adds to the interpretation that her imagination
of the Commander, or hang herself in the closet. She actually hinders her independence, instead of helping her
also imagines kicking Serena Joy in the head, just like cope with Gilead.
Ofglen did at the Particicution. She imagines walking
calmly into the street. Finally she imagines going to
Nick’s room. But she’s too tired to do anything. She can
feel the ghost of the previous Handmaid encouraging
her.

Offred stands, maybe planning to do something, and Though Offred is recounting her story sometime after all of
sees that a black van with the winged eye logo has the action, which suggests that she survives her encounter
come to the house. Two men come out and ring the with the Eyes, she never breaks from the moment to reveal
doorbell. Offred regrets not having killed herself. Nick the future. Is this, too, a “reconstruction?” Just as Offred must
enters her room, and she hates him, thinking he might trust Nick, we must trust Offred.
have been an Eye all along. But he tells her that the
Eyes accompanying the van are part of Mayday. He
urges Offred to trust him.

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Serena Joy and the Commander look surprised. They The Commander’s last-ditch attempt to prevent the Eyes
didn’t call the Eyes. Serena Joy asks what Offred did, from getting to Offred, and his confused effort to understand
and they don’t say. The Commander asks for a warrant, what’s happening, make him suddenly profoundly
and they say they don’t need one, for “violation of state sympathetic. For once, the whole household, and the
secrets.” The Commander and Serena Joy turn on readers, are aligned with the same shocked emotions. And it
Offred, now worried that she might have betrayed becomes clear that everyone in Gilead is breaking the
them. Rita and Cora come out, and Cora cries. Offred theocratic laws; everyone is guilty because the laws are
thinks of how much Cora wanted a baby. impossible to obey.

The two Eyes help Offred get into the van. She knows The cliffhanger ending means that the readers must behave
she can’t do anything else, and so she enters to an like Offred and imagine the many possibilities that may
uncertain fate. befall her.

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 Done by Miss Nadia Mitsiaris
[Source: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-handmaid-s-tale}

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