Offred Flashcards
‘Like scarecrows’/’like grey shadows’/’like the mouths painted with thick brushes by kindergarten children’ (pg.32)
‘I hunger to commit the act of touch’ (pg.11)
‘The night is mine my own time to do with as I will, as long as i am quiet’ (pg.37)
‘Ruddy and cheerful like a Christmas card’ (pg.38)
‘I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling’ (pg.39)
‘It’s the choice that terrifies me’
In a world where choice is so restricted, Offred is unable to comprehend what to do when she is presented with morality choice
‘I wait, washed, brushed, fed like a prize pig’
The simile Offred uses as a pun but also shows how Offred doesn’t even have control over her appearance
‘There is a moon/ it passes out of sight and I see despair coming towards me like famine’
This metaphor describes Offred’s menstrual cycle and how every time she fails to conceive it increases her chance to be labelled as ‘infertile’ which will result in her being taken away
‘When she was calling us, crying, accusing, before the divorce’
Atwood reveals that Offred and Luke’s relationship began with them having an affair while he was still married - this foreshadows that Offred will have the tendency to engage in illicit affairs in the novel
‘There’s a leaf/ it’s the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen’
During traumatic moments, like her child being take away from her by force, Offred hyper fixates on small details to escape from what is actually happening
Maybe they’re drugging me. Maybe the life I think I’m living is a paranoid delusion’
The adverb ‘maybe’ being repeated perhaps indicates Offred’s paranoia of being surveyed and controlled by the regime
‘Here is a story, a better one’
Atwood uses metafiction throughout, engaging with the idea that stories are constructs - this also adds an unreliable element to Offred’s story as she is picking and choosing what story to tell
‘I am thirty three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes’
This is the only physical description Atwoof gives of Offred and is very vague again stripping her of a lot of individuality
‘I have viable ovaries. I have one more chance’
Offred using it as one of her descriptors shows the importance placed on fertility by society
‘It’s the same kind of hunger/which I can’t indulge’ (p.191)
The restriction of human connection makes people even more desperate to obtain this phsicality and connection
‘Something chokes in my throat. The bitch, not to tell me’ (p.206
A maternal instinct rises in Offred as she has been taken away from her daughter - even after all this time she still feels a lot of love for her daughter
‘I want anything that breaks the monotony’ (p.233)
The desperation for change and rebellion is exhibited by Offred who will literally do anything just to know she is not fully stuck in her current situation
‘I must be back at the house before midnight; otherwise I’ll turn into a pumpkin’ (p.256)
This alludes to the fairy tale of Cinderella however it is ironic as Offred is far from having a fairy tale ending
‘I’m alive in my skin, again’ (p.263)
Offred is receiving the physical contact she has craved for and now feels herself again
‘I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments like a body caught in crossfire’ (p.269)
Offred directly addresses the reader and seems apologetic of the unreliability and sadness of her story - it reminds the reader Offred is telling a story of ‘tale’
‘I look at the grass instead. I describe the rope’ (p.278)
During uncomfortable and violent circumstances, Offred hyper fixates on small objects in order to escape from what is currently happening around her seen during her and Luke’s attempted escape
