VIII Birth Day

Question 1

I’m dreaming that I’m awake

Answer 1

Wants to escape reality in all forms

Question 2

Maybe the life I think I’m living in is a paranoid delusion

Answer 2

Makes readers re-appraise themselves of whether the information that Offred has told is correct

Question 3

To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure

Answer 3

Hyper fixation to keep sanity as her mind is being under stimulated

Question 4

Pleasure is an egg

Answer 4

Pleasure: noun

Question 5

The greater the risk the greater the glory

Question 6

Think of yourselves as pearls

Question 7

-they have oranges!-

Answer 7

Links to chapter 5, ‘the war interferes with the oranges from California’//‘it will be something, to have made oranges happen’

Question 8

‘Smell of matrix’

Question 9

‘Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind’

Answer 9

Offred could also be referring to accepting Gilead more and more than resisting

Question 10

‘We smile too, we are one, tears run down our cheeks, we are so happy’

Answer 10

Collective pronoun: cult essence

Question 11

‘Nevertheless we are jubilant, its a victory, for all of us. We’ve done it’

Question 12

‘She will never be declared unwoman, that is her reward’

Question 13

‘For once i welcome solitude’

Question 14

‘I’m too tired to go on with this story. I’m too tired to think about where i am. Here is a different story, a better one’

Answer 14

Extended metaphor of this being fictional and that she is not to be trusted with what she says

Question 15

‘She’d roll over for anyone’

Answer 15

Offred -Janine (female competitor)

Question 16

‘Don’t move, said Moira, or I’ll stick it all the way in, I’ll know where, I’ll puncture your lung’

Answer 16

This imagery is very violent gruesome. Shows Moira’s rebellion.

Question 17

‘She used to fix her own car’

Answer 17

Moira used to fix her car, seen as a male activity. She rebels against the female conformity.

Question 18

‘Moira had a bad reputation’

Answer 18

Aunt Lydia opinion: she is the alter ego of rebel. ‘She is a cunning and dangerous woman’—‘I could kill you, you know, (Moira to Aunt Elizabeth)

Question 19

Moira was like an elevator with open sides, she made us dizzy—‘Nevertheless she was our fantasy’

Question 20

CH.23 ‘This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction’

Answer 20

Everything is fabricated, this validates the historical notes. If the professor had to configure the already reconstructed information. Nothing within the novel can be known as fact.

Question 21

CH.23 ‘We are two legged wombs’

Answer 21

The deprivation of making them seem like humans with a greater purpose.

Question 22

‘It’s an oasis of the forbidden. I try not to stare’

Answer 22

It’s a desire, alluring her. It’s a reminder of the ‘freedom land’, this can promote her to want to rebel.