Chapters 29

“My red shoes are off, my legs tucked up underneath me on the chair… we have built a repertoire
of such gestures, such familiarities, between us… what would you like to read tonight ?”
“While I read, the commander sits and watches me doing it, without taking his eyes of me, I feel
undressed, I wish he could turn his back, then perhaps I could relax.”

This chapter begins with offred and the Commander in his office playing Scrabble again. The
environment has changed and the relationship has become for informal, more comfortable and
casual with each others company and the body language is relaxed and less tense. This comfort has
turned their Scrabble evenings and acts of reading into a routine as Offred says. In particular, this
time the readers get a very detailed description of the Commanders attitude towards Offred
when/while she was reading. The act of reading has become, for both of them, like a pleasurable,
impulsive and indulgent past time that is almost like sex, like binging on a feast which are guilty
pleasure. A theme that can be recognized on handmaidens tale and specifically in this chapter is
rebellion, because of this oppressed and dominant society. Women are forbidden from reading the
game of scrabble are illegal and a form of rebellion. Her reading sessions are illegal and therefore a
form of rebellion as are her actual meetings with the Commander. Also, by asking her what would
she like to read highlights again that the Commander asserts power and control over Offred by
limiting her interactions with words and literature when she is with him. This mentains control and
power as he is able to control her new freedom and her new freedom of speech. This can also be
seen as the Commander oppressing Offred.
“She hanged her self, Serena found out”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here any more.”
“ I thought you were enjoying it.”
Almost in the end of the evening/chapter the commander informs Offred that Serena found out
about the other Handmaid that hanged her self. So later this time, Offred had decided that maybe
she shouldn’t going there any more and the Commander was surprised by her reaction. In this
moment when Offred heard the news, she was worried about if Serena Joy finds about her visits to
the Commander she will receive the same treatment as the previous handmaid. The previous
handmaid who did also the same as Offred does now, hanged herself because of Serena’s
subsequent treatment. She realized that she next in line and he acts like this, with kindness and
offering his help, just for his own needs. The Commander exhibits a negative reaction against women
and female sexuality since he sees them as inferior physically and intellectually. His actions with the
previous Handmaid resulted in her death, by suicide, which illustrates how much control the men
have over the women. As a result, this imbalance is ultimately flipped when Offred controls the
Commander with the guilt and possibility of her death.

Chapter 30

“But it’s the same king of hunger… they cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot
replace each other. Nick for like or Luke for Nick. Should does not apply.”
“I’ll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant to kill. You
have to create an it where none was before…That one of the things they do. They force you to kill,
within yourself.”
The next section “Night” begins with Offred staring/looking out the window when suddenly her and
Nick’s eyes meet. She is contemplating if Nick could be replaced in any way. By saying cannot be
exchanged and should does not apply shows again the sexual expression of women and how they
respond to mutual attraction, especially in such controlled and oppressed society. In this case also,
she feels this mutual attraction between Nick and herself but shuts the curtains very quickly,
because she is too fearful to explore this attraction. Her attraction is foreshadowed from the first
time she noticed him, by the way she describes him, “showing his forearms.. tanned but with a
stipple of dark hairs” in chapter 4. But Offred cannot seem to manage to give up her love with Luke,
and feels guilty for feeling that way she does by closing the curtains. As every other “Night”, it
represent how lonely Offred feels as a Handmaid, so her desire to rethink and analyze her pay life,
through flashbacks, is totally understandable and normal since night is the only time that she has a
type of freedom and privacy. Then she remembers the day Luke and her tried to escape from Gilead
and when Luke killed their cat so that she will not starve or make noise(meowing). Unfortunately
their escape attempt failed. This flashback highlights the loss of morality in Gilead, how outside and
against Gilead has become from her standards of acceptable, honest and moral behavior.
Dehumanizing people makes it easier to destroy them, so that is the role of it here and the reason
Offred said you have to create an it, because in this new society this is the way, this is the way to
erase someone’s identity and in this case their cat. They force you to kill, within yourself, victims are
forced with the thing they fear the most and in their terror are willing to denounce their lives ones
as long as they themselves are spared. In this case they fear of losing each other because of they
love for each other. Offred’s experience as a Handmaid parallels the experience of the cat and the
hanged people with their faces covered. It seems that Offred is like her cat here, vulnerable and
disposable. The theme in this section is Power, the rising of the totalitarian society.

Chapter 17 Vassia

‘I rub the butter over my face, work it into the skin of my hands. There's no longer any hand lotion or
face cream, not for us. Such I things are considered vanities. We are containers, it's only the insides
of our bodies that are important. The outside can become hard and wrinkled, for all they care, like
the shell of a nut. This was a decree of the Wives, this absence of hand lotion. They don't want us to
look attractive. For them, things are bad enough as it is.’
‘I want to steal something.’
‘What should I take? Something that will not be missed. A withered daffodil, not one from the dried
arrangement.’
‘I want to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry. He puts his hand on my arm, pulls me
against him, his mouth on mine, what else comes from such denial?’

Back in her room, Offred gets ready for bed. She takes the butter out of her shoe and uses it as a
moisturizer, as lotion for her skin. She says she does this whenever she gets the chance, which it's a
strategy she learned at the Red Center. By doing this, she keeps alive the hope that she might
become free and finally reclaim her body. Since they have been striped of anything, such as their
femininity, their individuality or anything that gives them pleasure and in this case, the butter is the
only way to maintain her personhood, womanhood, and identity. She decides she wants to assert
her own will, even if only in a tiny way, by stealing something. They are not even allowed the
necessities, beauty products and that highlights the lack of freedom. This is also an act of rebellion,
nearly every character commits an unauthorised act against Gilead’s regime/law, but Offred’s acts of
rebellion are tiny unlike Moira’s. Offred goes on and say that Handmaids ‘are containers, it’s only the
insides of their bodies that are important.’ The way that they are seen as ‘containers’ rather that
people, dehumanises them to a mineral state. However, it must be noted that this is
only Offred’s point of view, so it is biased to her own journey in Gilead. But, the reader, at this point
of the narrative, does not have any reason to disbelieve Offred. Then she experiences a sense of
freedom as she sneaks away from her room. Offred asks herself what she should take and decides
that it should be something ‘that will not be missed.’ This way, she will not be caught at easily for
theft. Stealing could be interpreted as Offred taking something from Serena Joy since she had
taken all her freedoms. Also, this small gesture of defiance allows Offred to remind herself ‘of
what once I could do’. She wants to press the flower under the mattress and leave it for the next
Handmaid, just as the previous Handmaid left on her room scratched words and particularly in
the closet. This particularly demonstrates that the women in Gilead rediscover precious
fragments of identity in the ‘tiny peepholes’ (chapter 4, p.21) of possibility that exist in the
oppressive regime. Offred then realizes that she’s not alone, it’s Nick and after a brief
conversation, he kisses her. Kissing Nick, too, is a choice she makes for herself. Offred is regretting
her idea of coming to steal something as she says there is ‘too much trust, too much risk, too much
already.’ In addition, Offred evidently has a sexual attraction to Nick as she goes on and say, ‘I want
to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry.’ The metaphor for sex, used through the double
entendre of ‘hungry’, implies that Offred is so deprived of passionate ‘love’ that she is becoming
greedy and ‘hungry’ for Nick. The sense of ‘taste’ is very significant here, to reinforce the
υπονοουμενο that Offred uses. But Offred begins to think that the person in front of her is Luke, in
Nick’s body, and this is the reason for her sexual attraction to him. However, the readers can
speculate that this is a lie to herself so that she can persuade herself that she is not cheating on Luke
or anything like it, but she is actually attracted to Nick for him and not for the idea that it “could be
Luke”. Her loneliness has her desperate for any kind of companionship. The major theme in this
chapter is the forbidden desires (the butter, the stealing of the flower and kissing Nick and Nick is
not allowed to communicate or see women’s faces) and as a result so is the rebellion and
identity(flower).