chapter 9

Question 1

Someone like me

Answer 1

Someone like me - Again there is a suggestion of the double. A previous Offred
would have had the same name and costume - but would also, so the current
Offred believes, have been ‘like her’ in preserving her individuality and
rebelliousness in small, hidden ways.

Question 2

Postcards … an impossible thing now

Answer 2

Postcards … an impossible thing now - Freedom to communicate and
freedom of language are repressed and strictly controlled in Gilead - as they
have been in many régime

Question 3

• stains … evidence of love … touch -

Answer 3

The importance of the ability to touch,
to exchange physical human warmth, is something which Atwood stresses
throughout the novel. In the very first chapter the women ‘touch each other’s
hands across space’ in the dark, in order to ‘exchange’ human feeling. (c.f.
also chapter 2: ‘I hunger to commit the act of touch.’)

Question 4

I turn her into Moira -

Answer 4

I turn her into Moira - Offred imagines that the unknown writer of the
message is like her friend Moira, who becomes an important symbol of
individuality and rebellion in the novel.