Offred Quotes Flashcards
Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.
As Offred describes her room in the Commander’s house, the reader gets insight into how she uses, or doesn’t use, her thoughts in an attempt to survive. From early on she decides that no matter how unbearable her life as a Handmaid becomes, she wants to survive as long as she can, even if it means giving up parts of herself
I have them, these attacks of the past like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head. Sometimes it can hardly be borne. What is to be done, what is to be done, I thought. There is nothing to be done.
Offred wonders what to do about vivid memories that overwhelm her, such as lying in bed with her husband Luke. Offred prioritizes surviving in Gilead, and she holds little hope that she will see her family again. Her will to survive seems to be more driven by self-preservation than hope for the future.
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.
As Offred looks out the window to see the Commander getting into his car, she sees him in an objective light that allows her to question her feelings about him. Her thoughts show Offred’s complicated relationship with the Commander, even before they begin seeing each other in secret. Even though he helped create Gilead, she feels a certain sympathy for him as at times he seems as trapped in Gilead as she is.
He nods, then turns and leaves the room, closing the door with exaggerated care behind him, as if both of us are his ailing mother. There’s something hilarious about this, but I don’t dare laugh.
Offred observes the Commander’s behavior as he leaves the room after the Ceremony. In Offred’s thoughts, we can see her wry and dark sense of humor, which often helps her get through the day in Gilead. Her observation also gives insight into what Offred must have been like with her husband and Moira before the rise of Gilead, when she did not need to stifle her laughter.
I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she’d made. I didn’t want to live my life on her terms.
Offred analyzes the relationship she had with her mother whom she has described as a feminist activist. Although Offred admired her mother, she resisted going down the same path and sometimes even felt embarrassed by her. She never felt comfortable protesting or standing up for women’s rights, even when she felt her old life crumbling around her. Her indifference to rising up against Gilead’s repression finds it roots in the complacency she felt before the new regime started.
But even so, and stupidly enough, I’m happier than I was before. It’s something to do, for one thing. Something to fill the time, at night, instead of sitting alone in my room. It’s something else to think about. I don’t love the Commander or anything like it, but he’s of interest to me, he occupies space, he is more than a shadow.
Offred reflects on the change in her life after she and the Commander begin spending the evenings together in his study. A few nights a week, they have conversations, play games, and read old magazines. The fact that these small allowances make her relatively happy shows how far little diversions go to make life bearable for people in dire situations.
Occasionally I try to put myself in his position. I do this as a tactic, to guess in advance how he may be moved to behave towards me. It’s difficult for me to believe I have power over him, of any sort, but I do; although it’s of an equivocal kind.
Offred discovers she can influence the Commander during their evenings together, and she wants to play him to her advantage. She tries to guess at what he wants from her, and what she can do to get something in return. The reader sees her cleverness as well as her joy in wielding any sort of power she can over authority figures.
This interpretation hasn’t occurred to me. I apply it to the Commander, but it seems too simple for him, too crude. Surely his motivations are more delicate than that. But it may only be vanity that prompts me to think so.
Offred has difficulty processing the explanation Moira offers for why the Commander brought Offred to Jezebel’s. Moira says that it’s a common occurrence for Commanders to dress up and show off their Handmaids. Offred’s reaction here shows that she’d like to believe the Commander feels some affection for her. Even though she admits several times she does not love the Commander, she still wants to be valued by him for who she is.
So I will go on. So I will myself to go on. I am coming to a part you will not like at all, because in it I did not behave well, but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out. After all you’ve been through, you deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but includes the truth.
Offred warns the reader of the ugliness of her behavior in continuing her relationship with Nick. Seeing Nick gives Offred something to look forward to and live for. She prioritizes this need when she dismisses Ofglen’s request for Offred’s help with Mayday. Offred knows that her actions were selfish but is determined to let the truth be known, showing her self-awareness and guilt over not acting against Gilead.
Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantly: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.
Offred reflects on a conversation she had with Moira in college. She finds it hard to believe that they were once so casual and carefree in a way that life in Gilead doesn’t allow. Here, she admits that they weren’t unaware of the changes happening around them. Like everyone, they preferred to pretend the changes weren’t happening and live their lives as usual. The willing ignorance eventually led to the rise of Gilead, which shows how dangerous ignoring a situation can be.
I didn’t go on any of the marches. Luke said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him and her.
Offred recalls that when she was fired from her job because women were no longer allowed to work, there were some small protest marches she didn’t join. She and her husband resigned themselves to the changes happening in their world. As they felt powerless to resist the new regime, they tried to focus on their family instead. However, because not enough people tried to fight back, their family ended up being torn apart anyway.
I said, I have made a life for myself, here, of a sort. That must have been what the settlers’ wives thought, and women who survived wars, if they had a man. Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
Offred considers Ofglen’s offer to help her escape Gilead, and she rationalizes her desire to stay. Now that she has begun seeing Nick secretly, she feels she has something more to live for compared with the years she went without love or affection. Although her situation has improved a bit, her willingness to remain essentially a prisoner in Gilead shows how little it takes to make her ignore the atrocities taking place in her world.
Rita scowls at me before slipping in to stand behind me. It’s my fault, this waste of her time. Not mine, but my body’s, if there is a difference.
Offred reacts to the pessimistic expression of a member of the household during preparations for the procreation ceremony. Since authorities in Gilead restrict Handmaids’ roles to conception and childbirth, Offred begins to see that only her fertility matters to others. In this wry observation, Offred assumes the blame for not producing, differentiating between herself and her body. Her complex character with intellect and a sense of humor contrasts with the mindset of those she serves, who see her only worth lies in her ability to conceive a child.
My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day.
As Offred remembers the day she and her husband and daughter tried to escape across the border, she recalls the name she had then. In Gilead, a Handmaid’s name derives from the name of the man whom they serve, easily changeable and anonymous. Offred tries to downplay the loss of her name but instead realizes a name holds more meaning than a simple telephone number. In taking away her name Gilead stripped her of her identity, now buried treasure in Offred’s consciousness.
Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied.
Offred thinks of her husband and daughter and wishes she could hold them. Part of her identity in her former life was being a wife and mother, and now that she can no longer care for her family or give and receive any physical affection, she experiences dissociation. She feels “disembodied” due to being separated from her family, depicting how detrimental a lack of love can be to the spirit.
The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder these things used to happen.
Offred recalls Aunt Lydia’s account of how women used to behave, particularly in the warm times of year. Aunt Lydia postulates that when women dressed provocatively, they invited men to take advantage of them. By saying that crimes wouldn’t happen to nice women who cover themselves up, Aunt Lydia places all the blame on the women who are the victims rather than on the men who are the perpetrators. Aunt Lydia’s practice of blaming women performs an important role of indoctrination in Gilead’s mandated conformity.
There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law.
When Offred goes to the doctor for her monthly checkup, the doctor offers to try to impregnate her, explaining that most men like the Commander are sterile. His observation shocks Offred, as Gilead statutes outlaw suggesting the possibility of male sterility. Responsibility for failure of a couple to conceive officially falls on the woman regardless of the man’s state of health. The law represents another example of society’s use of women as scapegoats.
But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison. Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us. She did. She did. She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.
Offred recalls a Handmaid teaching session in the Red Center. Janine had shared that she was raped as a teenager and had an abortion. The Aunts make the rest of the Handmaids tell Janine that it was her fault. Not only do the Aunts want Janine to internalize the idea that she led her rapists on, but they also want to indoctrinate in the others that women are to blame in these situations. The group chant demonstrates the behavior the Aunts want to instill, namely, women should take pleasure in shaming each other.
There’s hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think doesn’t matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things.
Offred makes a guarded statement to the Commander during one of their nights together in his study. As he presses her to tell him what she thinks about their new society, she plays dumb by telling him she doesn’t think much. Sharing her opinions may prove risky, while deflection may keep herself safe and keep him talking. Like the rest of Gilead, the Commander believes women aren’t a danger because they have no original thoughts of their own.
My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. 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.
Here, Offred describes her and Serena Joy’s positions during the procreation ceremony. Many aspects of a Handmaid’s imprisonment in Gilead appear as rituals for her own good or marks of her special status as a potential childbearing woman. The Ceremony is one of these rituals: as the Wife holds her surrogate’s hands, the connection designed to symbolize one being functions to restrain the Handmaid. The true purpose for Serena Joy’s presence is to exert control, even pin Offred down if necessary.
