HT - Themes Flashcards
Hope: ‘We yearned
‘We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?
Hope: ‘We still
‘we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy’
Hope: ‘I tell
“I tell therefore you are”
Hope: “Why did
“Why did she bother? There’s no way out of here.”
Hope: ‘Faith
“Faith is only a word, embroidered.”
Hope: “lets stop
“Let’s stop there. I intend to get out of here. It can’t last forever.”
Hope: ‘I would
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.”
Identity: ‘My name
‘My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden’
Identity: “I tell
‘I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known. I act like a dunce. I should know better. I make of him an idol, a cardboard cut-out.
Companionship: ‘sinking my
“Sinking my hands into that soft resistant warmth which is so much like flesh’
Companionship: “I feel
‘I feel like the word shattered. I want to be with someone’.
Identity: ‘I am
‘I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes. I have trouble remembering what I used to look like. I have viable ovaries. I have one more chance’
Women: ‘What he
‘What he is fucking is the lower part of my body’
Women: ‘You wanted
‘You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.’
Women: ‘You wanted a
‘You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.’
Women: ‘I don’t want
‘I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.’
Women: ‘Take back
“TAKE BACK THE NIGHT’
Women: ‘We still
‘we still had our bodies’
Freedom: ‘I try not
“I try not to think too much, like other things now, thought must be rationed”
Freedom: ‘It was freedom
“it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Dont underrate it”
Freedom: ‘A rat
” a rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze”
Freedom: ‘Freedom to and
“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.”
Gender roles: ‘There is
“There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore”
Gender Roles: ‘We are for
“We are for breeding purposes”
Gender roles: “we are containers
“We are containers…only the inside of our bodies are important”
Gender roles: ‘better never means
“better never means better for everyone.. it always means worse for some”
Rebellion: ‘I believe in
“I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow”
Rebellion: ‘Steal something
“Steal something … make me feel I have power”
Rebellion: ‘I hunger to
” I hunger to commit the act of touch”
Rebellion: ‘Why did
“Why did she bother? There’s no way out of here.”
Surveillance: ‘The truth is
“The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers”
Regime: ‘It will
“it will become ordinary”
Regime: ‘They force
“They force you to kill within yourself”
Acceptance: ‘We still had
“We still had our bodies.That was our fantasy”
Relationships: They were right,
“They were right, it’s easier, to think of her as dead. I don’t have to hope then”
Relationships: “Nobody dies from
‘Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.’
Storytelling: ‘I would like to
“I would like to believe that this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.’
Storytelling: “Ill pretend you
“I’ll pretend you can hear me. But it’s no good, because I know you can’t.”
Storytelling: ‘Night falls.
‘Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?’
Confinement: “I have made
“I have made a life for myself, here, of a sort.”
Confinement: ‘Already we were
‘Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure.’
Religion: ‘‘As in a
‘As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors.’
Religion: ‘My God
‘My God (…) I don’t believe for an instant that what’s going on out there is what You meant.’
Identity: “we smile
‘We smile too, we are one smile’
Identity: ‘I keep
‘I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day.’
Knowledge: ‘Knowing was a
“Knowing was a temptation. What you don’t know won’t tempt you., Aunt Lydia used to say.”
Knowledge: ‘Maybe I don’t
“Maybe I don’t really want to know what’s going on… The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.”
Gender roles: ‘to be a
‘to be a man watched by women. must be entirely strange’
Gender roles: ‘the problem wasn’t
‘the problem wasn’t only with women, he says. the main problem was with the men’
Power: ‘remember that
‘remember that forgiveness too is a power’
Identity: ‘the colour
‘the colour of blood which defies us’
Love: ‘falling in love
‘falling in love, we said; i fell for him. we are falling women’
indoctrination: ‘blessed be
‘blessed be the fruit, may the lord open’
