Symbols

Question 1

Harvard University

Answer 1

Gilead has transformed Harvard into a detention center run by the Eyes, his secret police. Dissidents’ bodies hang from the Wall, and mass executions occur in Harvard Yard. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world Gilead has created, transforming a university founded on knowledge and truth into a seat of oppression and torture.

Question 2

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Answer 2

The center of Gilead’s power is a town in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was the site of America’s first religious and intolerant society, the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. The ancient Puritan church, which Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, symbolizes the connection between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead, who dealt with religious, sexual, and political deviation.

Question 3

The Handmaids’ Red Habits

Answer 3

The red costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolize fertility, childbirth, and sexual sin, reminiscent of the scarlet letter worn by Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan ideology. Although their reproductive role is justified in the Bible, they may commit adultery by having sex with their married Commanders, causing pain for their wives. The red garments also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of their position in Gilead.

Question 4

The Eyes

Answer 4

The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.