Offred/Winston everyman quotes

Question 1

Offred

Answer 1

• ordinary narrator focuses on small details to cope - Professor’s dismissal in historical notes
• outwardly complicit
• limited defiance - cynicism / winks
• some critics view her as passive and cowardly

Question 2

Winston

Answer 2

• physical ailments
• middle aged
• mundane circumstances - class and unfulfilling marriage
• cowardly? complicit?

Question 3

Winston quotes

Answer 3

• ‘Winston who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way’
• ‘In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over’

Question 4

Offred quotes

Answer 4

• ‘Don’t you know how many women’s lives, how many women’s bodies, the tanks had to roll over just to get that far?’
• ‘There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time’
• ‘I wish this story were different… if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia’
• ‘I want to be here with Nick, where I can get at him’
• ‘I can’t, I say to Ofglen. I’m too afraid… Anyway, I’d be no good at that, I’d get caught’
• ‘Myself is now a thing that one must compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born’
• ‘I don’t want to see it any more. I look at the grass instead. I describe the rope’
• ‘I’ll confess to any crime. I’ll end up hanging from a hook on the Wall. Keep your head down, I used to tell myself and see it through. It’s no use.’