Theme - Love Flashcards
Despite offreds general passivity in the face of the oppressive society, she has a deep and secret source of strength. Though love might keep offred complacent, permitting her to daydream rather than the act rebellious outright, it’s also responsible for the novels greatest triumph. As love drives nick to help offred escape. Her love for all the other characters around offred allow her to keep sane and live within her memories to distort the reality in which she lives in the republic of Gilead. Although the novel never proposes an ideal society or a clear way to apply its message to the real world, and although the novel looks critically on many modern movements including the religious right and extreme feminist left, love turns out to be the most effective force for good. Love is also a driving force behind other characters actions. We know nick reciprocates offreds feelings, but also the search for love, in the form of a real, not purely function human connection, influences the commanders desire to bend the rules. In the end, love is the best way get around gileads strict hierarchal rules as it allows for both secret mental resistance to distort her own reality as a coping mechanism and way of living, but also for the trust and risk that result in offreds great escape.
“We thought we had such __________. How were we to know we were _________”
Problems
Happy
• offred has described the time when she first arrived at the commanders house and spent hours looking around her bedroom. This memory has then made her think of hotel rooms, and the time she spent having an affair with Luke while he was still married. She reflects at the time they thought they had such “problems” and did not appreciate how happy they truly were. Thus enforcing how society can change “like a gradually heating bath tub”, conveying how the cliched wisdom of not being able to appreciate what you have until it’s gone. Regardless of how difficult it might’ve been for them to conduct their affair in secret at least they were free and loved each other. At the same time, offred does not condemn or resent her former inability to enjoy the freedom she had, asking rhetorically how she could have known otherwise.
“But this is _______, nobody dies from the lack of sex. It’s the lack of ______ we die from.”
Wrong
Love
• while sneaking downstairs to steal a daffodil, offred remembers running into nick for an erotically charged moment. Back in her room she remembers thinking that if she thought she’d never have sex again she’d die. She then corrects herself, saying that people can live without sex but not without love. This view resonates ambiguously with the events of the novel. Despite the sexual repression by the state, Gilead is a world filled with sex, from the ceremony to Jezebel’s to the illicit acts and gestures performed in secret between various characters. This indicates that people’s drive to have sex will survive even the strictest repression of sexuality. On the other hand, all that sex doesn’t seem to make people very happy or provide any meaning to their lives outside of their designated function. And for offred herself, sex has become to play a negative role in her life. Yet she is sustained by the memories of love. Indeed, this quotation relates back to offreds statements of believing she is “telling a story” helps her stay alive. Both strategies highlight the fundamental importance in trusting that there are people out there in the world who love and care about you.
“He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t _______ it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each others anymore. Instead, I am _____.
Mind
His
• offred finally explains how the United States turned into the republic of Gilead. Recalling the time when her, like many other women, she was fired from her job and her bank account drained. She explains that she considered protesting but that Luke encouraged her not to, for her own safety. In this passage, she remembers that Luke might have liked this shift in power. This is a surprising moment in the narrative as it is shown that her and Luke’s relationship is to be more complicated than it appears. There is no doubt that offred loves Luke as the memory of him and hope she might see him again someday allows her to survive her torturous life as a handmaid. On the other hand, even their devotion to one another cannot remain untainted by sexism and the wider political situation. She can’t help but suspect that he doesn’t mind or even enjoys the power that the new state of affairs give him over her. However, she never asks him about it, implying that sexism creates a communicative gulf between men and women, even those whom love and trust each other. It seems that only in a true equal society would men and women be able to love and communicate with total honesty.
All I can hope for is ____________: the way ______ feels is always only __________.”
Reconstruction
Love
Approximate
• compelled by Serena joy, offered has gone to nick’s apartment in order to have sex with him in the hope of getting pregnant. Offred tells several versions of her encounter with nick; the first she portrays the experience as positive and passionate, the second as awkward and transactional. She then admits that it is hard to accurately recreate what happened between them, saying the “way love feels is always only approximate”. Here offred connects the experience of love to story telling and memory. Indeed, these two themes are closely intertwined in the narrative, as many of offreds memories are of times when she loved and felt loved. However, the connection also illuminates the fact that both love and memory are elusive - we can never be sure of our perception of either.
“And so I step up into the ___________ within; or else the _______.”
Darkness
Light
• this final sentence of this of offreds narrative describes her getting in the van, unsure of stepping into the “darkness” or the “light”. Darkness in this passage symbolises suffering death and the meaningless of offreds life as she will be killed by the state. Light is to symbolise hope, morality and the possibility of escape from Gilead, or even the end of the regime all together. This final sentence leaves readers unsure of offreds fate. This ambiguity is connected to the novels ambivalent presentation of human nature. Every major character in the narrative has the capacity to act cruel but has some redeeming qualities. Though it shows the power that love has on a person, how nick has risked not only his place in society but his life in order to help offred escape. Thus enhancing offreds earlier statement that “people die from the lack of love”. Without nicks love offreds fate would’ve a torturous reality succumbing to the republic of Gilead and staying suppressed.
