Symbols

Question 1

What is the colour of the Handmaid’s uniforms?

Answer 1

Red.

Question 2

What is associated with the colour red?

Answer 2

Shame (The Scarlet Letter), ripeness and fertility.

Question 3

What two ways does Offred describe blood?

Answer 3

She sometimes uses it to describe it as the life force that courses through her body, and sometimes as a marker of violence and death.

Question 4

Red also describes what in Serena Joy’s garden?

What are these a symbol of?

Answer 4

Tulips - they are sex organs but their flourishing will be futile since Serena Joy snips off their fruits.

Question 5

Paranoia, surveillance and Gilead’s authority is represented by what?

Answer 5

Eyes.

Question 6

Who are the secretive and violent enforcers of Gilead’s laws?

Answer 6

The Eyes.

Question 7

What is the blinded eye?

What does it come to signify?

Answer 7

The plastered-over light socket in Offred’s room.

She learns the previous Handmaid hung herself from the light fixture. It comes to signify death and freedom as well.