Quotes: Flashcards
Chapter 1: “We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”
Offred.
Theme of rebellion.
Chapter 2: “Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
Offred.
Theme of gender, religion and theodicy and rebellion.
Chapter 11: “I’ve crossed no boundaries, I’ve given no trust, taken no risk, all is safe. It’s the choice that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation”.
Offred.
Theme of rebellion.
Chapter 19: “A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get.”
Aunt Lydia.
Theme of gender, religion and theodicy and rebellion.
Chapter 46: “And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.”
Offred.
Theme of gender, religion and theodicy and love.
Chapter 2: “I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed.”
Offred.
Theme of religion and theodicy.
Chapter 5: “There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. 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.”
Offred and Aunt Lydia.
Theme of religion and theodicy.
Chapter 12: “I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely”.
Offred.
Theme of gender and religion and theodicy.
Chapter 18: “ But it is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.”
Offred.
Theme of love.
Chapter 28: “He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other’s, anymore. Instead, I am his.”
Offred to Luke.
Theme of gender and love.
Chapter 40: “ All I can hope for is reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.”
Offred.
Theme of love.
Chapter 32: “The problem wasn’t only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore . . . I’m not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy . . . You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage. Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do.”
- The Commander’s attempt to explain to Offred the reasons behind the foundation of Gilead.
- Theme of sexuality and gender.
Chapter 13: “I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. 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”.
Theme of gender and control.
