Key quotations Flashcards
(28 cards)
‘step sideways’
this refers to Offred’s ability to escape through her private memories of her life before Gilead.
‘Nolite te bastardes carborundorum’
Never let the bastards get you down
‘HOPE and CHARITY, where have they been stowed?’
Talking about the pillows, but there is a distinct subtext here used by Atwood, where she may be asking readers where such values have been stowed in actual society, especially with the rise of the New Right.
‘our fantasy’
used to describe Moira and how the women saw her after her attempt at escape
‘I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well. …’
‘… Flowers, for instance.’
‘There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, …’
‘… a sense of buried things bursting upwards’
‘tiny peepholes’
Offred searches for moments of instability in which human responses break through official surfaces.
‘Still, it must be hell…’
‘… to be a man like that.’
‘a circle with a stem…’
‘… like the stem of an apple.’
‘Perspective is…’
‘… necessary.’
‘If it’s only a story,…’
‘… it becomes less frightening..’
‘I want anything that…’
‘… breaks the monotony.’
‘Which of us is it worse for…’
‘… , her or me?’
‘All flesh is…’
‘… grass’
‘They’ve frozen them… Any account with an F on it instead of an M. …’
‘… All they needed to do was push a few buttons.’
‘Whatever is silenced…’
‘… will clamour to be heard.’
“The sin…”
“… of reading.”
‘Already we were losing the taste for freedom, ….’
‘… Already we were finding these walls secure.’
‘In this house…’
‘… we all envy eachother.’
‘You don’t tell a story only to yourself. …’
‘… There’s always someone else.’
Offred/Atwood breaking the fourth wall and disrupting the narrator/reader dynamic as an awareness of the reader is displayed.
the egg
“for the moment we’re mirrors”
Offred and Nick united in their desperation for human connection (though this comes with moral complications and can be selfish at times)
Historical notes: “As all historians know, the past is a great darkness”
from the historical notes, carries a distinct subtext. while this is discussing the struggle historians often have with deciphering information and evidence from the past, the polysemy of “darkness” - describing an absence of light in addition to that which is despicable - may also bring about the idea of the tapestry of human history containing many immoral doings which we must learn from.
“Our biggest mistake was teaching them to read”
