HMT

Question 1

rat maze

Answer 1

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere so long as it stays inside the maze”

Question 2

walking womb

Answer 2

“We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”

Question 3

one flesh, control

Answer 3

“This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any.”

Question 4

unreliable narration, not sure how it happened

Answer 4

“it didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly”

Question 5

unreliable narration, Moira’s story

Answer 5

“I’ve filled it out for her as much as I can: we didn’t have much time so she just gave me the outlines. It’s a way of keeping her alive.”

Question 6

Offred name

Answer 6

“My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter…but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter.”

Question 7

blank spaces, gaps between stories

Answer 7

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print…We lived in the gaps between the stories.” (chapter 10)

Question 8

her body, cloud, pear shaped etc

Answer 8

“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will… Now I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.”

Question 9

change in relationship with Luke once unemployed

Answer 9

“We are not each other’s anymore. Instead, I am his” (chapter 28)

Question 10

Commander, better/worse

Answer 10

“Better never means better for everyone…it always means worse, for some” the commander, chapter 32

Question 11

Offred looking at her body

Answer 11

“I avoid looking down at my body…I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely” (chapter 12)

Question 12

Aunt Lydia, temptation

Answer 12

“Knowing was a temptation, what you don’t know won’t tempt you.” Aunt Lydia, chapter 30

Question 13

Offred, ignoring/ignorance

Answer 13

“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

Question 14

fairytale, blood

Answer 14

“some fairytale figure in a red cloak… A sister, dipped in blood” p15

Question 15

types of freedom

Answer 15

“There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” Aunt Lydia, chapter 3

Question 16

hell to be a man

Answer 16

“Still it must be hell, to be a man like that. It must be fine. It must be hell. It must be very silent.”

Question 17

not hatred, not love

Answer 17

“I ought to feel hatred for this man. I know I ought to feel it, but it isn’t what I do feel. What I feel is more complicated than that. I don’t know what to call it. It isn’t love.”

Question 18

Janine, the testifying

Answer 18

“Her fault. Her fault. Her fault”

Question 19

Handmaids’ feelings towards Janine

Answer 19

“Even though we knew what was being done to her, we despised her.”

Question 20

Offred’s voice, dolls

Answer 20

“they used to have dolls, for little girls, that would talk if you pulled a string at the back; I thought I was sounding like that, voice of a monotone, voice of a doll.”

Question 21

daffodils vs tulips

Answer 21

“The daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling out colour.” p18

Question 22

first tulips reference (cut, heal)

Answer 22

“The tulips are red, a darker red towards the stem, as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there.”

Question 23

tulips, redder than ever

Answer 23

“redder than ever… like chalices, thrusting themselves up.”

Question 24

attacking the flowers imagery

Answer 24

“Some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body.” p157

Question 25

tulips dying

Answer 25

“The tulips have had their moment and are done, shedding their petals one by one, like teeth.” p156

Question 26

irises

Answer 26

“Then we had the irises…. So female in shape it was a surprise they’d not long since been rooted out” (p157)

Question 27

handmaid’s wings

Answer 27

“to keep us from seeing, but also to keep us from being seen”

Question 28

handmaids, Japanese tourists

Answer 28

“We are secret, forbidden, we excite them”

Question 29

bodies on the Wall, dolls

Answer 29

“Dolls on which faces have not yet been painted”

Question 30

bodies on the Wall, flour

Answer 30

“Or as if their heads were sacks, stuffed with…flour or dough”

Question 31

bodies on the Wall, mouths

Answer 31

“Like the mouths painted with thick brushes by kindergarten children.”

Question 32

blessed, made up

Answer 32

“Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out, too, but there was no way of checking.”

Question 33

bible, be read to

Answer 33

“The Bible…is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it if we ever got our hands on it? We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read”

Question 34

Commander, forbidden like drugs

Answer 34

“it was as though he was offering me drugs”

Question 35

Commander watching her

Answer 35

“This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it”

Question 36

Offred, feel like word

Answer 36

“I feel like the word shatter”

Question 37

power of forgiveness

Answer 37

“remember that forgiveness too is a power…to beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.”