Important Quotes Bank handmaids tale PDF

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IMPORTANT QUOTES BANK The Handmaid’s Tale

A LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE EDEXCEL

Contents Quotes by Character.........................................................................................................................2 Offred.......................................................................................................................................................................... 2 The Commander......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Serena Joy................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Moira........................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Aunt Lydia................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Quotes by Theme.............................................................................................................................8 Complacency............................................................................................................................................................... 8 Identity........................................................................................................................................................................ 9 Role of Women........................................................................................................................................................... 9 Imprisonment........................................................................................................................................................... 11 Important Quotes Explained...........................................................................................................12 Section I – Night, Section II - Shopping.....................................................................................................................14 Chapter 1-3............................................................................................................................................................ 14 Chapters 4-6..........................................................................................................................................................14 Section III Night, Section IV – Waiting Room............................................................................................................14 Chapter 7-9............................................................................................................................................................ 14 Chapter 10-12........................................................................................................................................................ 14 Section V – Nap, Section VI – Household.................................................................................................................15 Chapter 13-15........................................................................................................................................................ 15 Section VI – Household, Section VII – Night, Section VIII – Birth Day......................................................................15 Chapter 16-21........................................................................................................................................................ 15 Section VIII – Birth Day, Section IX – Night, Section X – Soul Scrolls........................................................................15 Chapters 22-25......................................................................................................................................................15 Section X – Soul Scrolls.............................................................................................................................................16 Chapters 26-28......................................................................................................................................................16 Section X – Soul Scrolls, Section XI – Night, Section XII – Jezebel’s..........................................................................16 Chapters 29-32......................................................................................................................................................16 Section XII – Jezebels................................................................................................................................................ 16 Chapters 33-36......................................................................................................................................................16 Section XII – Jezebels, Section XIII - Night................................................................................................................16 Chapters 37-40......................................................................................................................................................16

Section XIV – Salvaging, Section XV - Night..............................................................................................................17

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Chapters 41-44......................................................................................................................................................17

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Section XIV – Salvaging.............................................................................................................................................17

Chapters 45-46......................................................................................................................................................17

Quotes by Character Offred “Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.” As Offred describes her room in the Commander’s house, the reader gets insight into how she uses, or doesn’t use, her thoughts in an attempt to survive. From early on she decides that no matter how unbearable her life as a Handmaid becomes, she wants to survive as long as she can, even if it means giving up parts of herself.

“I have them, these attacks of the past like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head. Sometimes it can hardly be borne. What is to be done, what is to be done, I thought. There is nothing to be done.” Offred wonders what to do about vivid memories that overwhelm her, such as lying in bed with her husband Luke. Offred prioritizes surviving in Gilead, and she holds little hope that she will see her family again. Her will to survive seems to be more driven by self-preservation than hope for the future.

“I ought to feel hatred for this man. I know I ought to feel it, but it isn’t what I do feel. What I feel is more complicated than that. I don’t know what to call it. It isn’t love.” As Offred looks out the window to see the Commander getting into his car, she sees him in an objective light that allows her to question her feelings about him. Her thoughts show Offred’s complicated relationship with the Commander, even before they begin seeing each other in secret. Even though he helped create Gilead, she feels a certain sympathy for him as at times he seems as trapped in Gilead as she is.

“He nods, then turns and leaves the room, closing the door with exaggerated care behind him, as if both of us are his ailing mother. There’s something hilarious about this, but I don’t dare laugh.”

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“I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she’d made. I didn’t want to live my life on her terms.”

2

Offred observes the Commander’s behaviour as he leaves the room after the Ceremony. In Offred’s thoughts, we can see her wry and dark sense of humour, which often helps her get through the day in Gilead. Her observation also gives insight into what Offred must have been like with her husband and Moira before the rise of Gilead, when she did not need to stifle her laughter.

Offred analyses the relationship she had with her mother whom she has described as a feminist activist. Although Offred admired her mother, she resisted going down the same path and sometimes even felt embarrassed by her. She never felt comfortable protesting or standing up for women’s rights, even when she felt her old life crumbling around her. Her indifference to revolting against Gilead’s repression finds it roots in the complacency she felt before the new regime started.

“But even so, and stupidly enough, I’m happier than I was before. It’s something to do, for one thing. Something to fill the time, at night, instead of sitting alone in my room. It’s something else to think about. I don’t love the Commander or anything like it, but he’s of interest to me, he occupies space, he is more than a shadow.” Offred reflects on the change in her life after she and the Commander begin spending the evenings together in his study. A few nights a week, they have conversations, play games, and read old magazines. The fact that these small allowances make her relatively happy shows how far little diversions go to make life bearable for people in dire situations.

“Occasionally I try to put myself in his position. I do this as a tactic, to guess in advance how he may be moved to behave towards me. It’s difficult for me to believe I have power over him, of any sort, but I do; although it’s of an equivocal kind.” Offred discovers she can influence the Commander during their evenings together, and she wants to play him to her advantage. She tries to guess at what he wants from her, and what she can do to get something in return. The reader sees her cleverness as well as her joy in wielding any sort of power she can over authority figures.

“This interpretation hasn’t occurred to me. I apply it to the Commander, but it seems too simple for him, too crude. Surely his motivations are more delicate than that. But it may only be vanity that prompts me to think so.” Offred has difficulty processing the explanation Moira offers for why the Commander brought Offred to Jezebel’s. Moira says that it’s a common occurrence for Commanders to dress up and show off their Handmaids. Offred’s reaction here shows that she’d like to believe the Commander feels some affection for her. Even though she admits several times she does not love the Commander, she still wants to be valued by him for who she is.

“So I will go on. So I will myself to go on. I am coming to a part you will not like at all, because in it I did not behave well, but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out. After all you’ve been through, you deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but includes the truth.”

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The Commander

3

Offred warns the reader of the ugliness of her behaviour in continuing her relationship with Nick. Seeing Nick gives Offred something to look forward to and live for. She prioritizes this need when she dismisses Ofglen’s request for Offred’s help with Mayday. Offred knows that her actions were selfish but is determined to let the truth be known, showing her selfawareness and guilt over not acting against Gilead.

“He manages to appear puzzled, as if he can’t quite remember how we all got in here. As if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn’t figured out what to do with us.” Offred describes the Commander as he enters the room for the Ceremony and sees the assembled members of his household. His seeming to be flustered indicates that, while the Commander is a high-ranking official in Gilead, he is uncomfortable with the world he helped create. Offred’s comparison of the situation to a complicated antique mechanism suggests the architects of the new order used outdated ideas they themselves don’t understand. It becomes clear that as the Commander tries to make Offred’s life slightly more bearable, he never acts on his own apparent guilt by using his power to undo any of Gilead’s policies.

“The Commander likes it when I distinguish myself, show precocity, like an attentive pet, prick-eared and eager to perform.” Offred characterizes the Commander’s reactions to her during one of their Scrabble games when she plays a word he does not know. Offred’s show of intellect inflates the Commander’s pride: His Handmaid is cleverer than others’. Even though the Commander seems to see Offred as a human more than others in power in Gilead do, her observation here shows that his throw-back attitude towards women, that they exist for men’s pleasure and entertainment.

“Sometimes after a few drinks he becomes silly, and cheats at Scrabble. He encourages me to do it too, and we take extra letters and make words with them that don’t exist, words like smurt and crup, giggling over them. Sometimes he turns on his short-wave radio, displaying before me a minute or two of Radio Free America, to show me he can.” Offred describes how the Commander behaves during their evenings together. From her description, we can see the humanity that Offred sees in the Commander. At the same time, however, she notes the things he does to show her his power. Even though he has a highranking title and a household of people who belong to him, he is still insecure enough to need to show off the privileges he has. While seemingly innocent, such actions ensure Offred understands her powerlessness.

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.”

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“He retains hold of my arm, and as he talks his spine straightens imperceptibly, his chest expands, his voice assumes more and more the sprightliness and jocularity of youth. It occurs to me he is showing off. He is showing me off, to them, and they understand that… But also he is showing off to me. He is demonstrating, to me, his mastery of the world. He’s breaking the rules, under their noses, thumbing his nose at them, getting away with it.”

4

The Commander has just asked Offred what she thinks about Gilead, but before she can answer, he offers a defence. In serving a greater good, he accepts the trade-off life in Gilead requires from those who do not have power. He takes no action to make life better for those without power. In Gilead, he has power, and powerful people tend to let inequalities stand if they source their power from making others powerless.

Offred describes the Commander’s preening behaviour when they arrive at Jezebel’s. She seems surprised that the Commander feels the need to show off to her when she already knows the extent of his power. However, she realizes his power allows him to get away with behaviour that would not be acceptable in Gilead otherwise. His high position in the chain of command has desensitized him to guilt at breaking the rules that he helped to create.

Serena Joy “She wasn’t singing anymore by then, she was making speeches. She was good at it. Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all.” Offred describes Serena Joy’s background before Gilead. Originally a singer on a channel for fundamentalist religious values, she transitioned to a spokesperson for traditional values. The reader sees that Offred views Serena Joy as a hypocrite, who enjoyed working but preached against other women doing the same. Like the Aunts’ encouragement of women to shame one another, Serena Joy shamed women even before Gilead. Once in Gilead, she was brought down by her own ideas.

“She doesn’t make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn’t seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word.” Here, Offred describes the irony of Serena Joy’s clear bitterness from living in a world that she helped create. Women are not allowed to read or write, or have any power, so Serena Joy can do nothing but stay at home as she once preached that all women should do. Without the means to express her thoughts or emotions as easily as she used to, she is imprisoned within Gilead as well.

“Serena has begun to cry. I can hear her, behind my back. It isn’t the first time. She always does this, the night of the Ceremony. She’s trying not to make a noise. She’s trying to preserve her dignity, in front of us. The upholstery and the rugs muffle her but we can hear her clearly despite that. The tension between her lack of control and her attempt to suppress it is horrible.”

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“There is loathing in her voice, as if the touch of my flesh sickens and contaminates her. I untangle myself from her body, stand up… Before I turn away I see her straighten her blue skirt, clench her legs together; she continues lying on the bed, gazing up at the canopy above her, stiff and straight as an effigy. Which of us is it worse for, her or me?”

5

Offred describes Serena Joy’s distraught behaviour before the procreation rituals between Serena Joy’s husband and his Handmaid. Even though Serena Joy had a part in creating this Gilead policy, she routinely comes undone before the ritual designed to ensure their society could continue. She keenly feels her personal sacrifice each time. Although Handmaids pay a higher price in living as captives, she and the other wives endure oppression in their own ways.

After the Ceremony, Serena Joy tells Offred to get out of the room. Offred knows the surrogate copulation humiliates Serena Joy, and she wonders which of them has it worse. However, Serena Joy takes out her hatred and frustration on Offred, who has had no say in the matter. Serena Joy’s attitude shows her self-centeredness as well as her mastery of blaming other women for her own problems.

““How could you be so vulgar? I told him…” She drops the cloak, she’s holding something else, her hand all bone. She throws that down as well. The purple sequins fall, slithering down over the step like snakeskin, glittering in the sunlight. “Behind my back,” she says. “You could have left me something.” Does she love him, after all?” After Offred goes to Jezebel’s with the Commander, Serena Joy confronts Offred with the evidence of their physical intimacy. She has found lipstick smudged on the cloak that Offred wore and figured out what happened. As Offred notes, Serena Joy’s sense of betrayal suggests she feels something for the Commander. However, rather than confronting the Commander, who she knows initiated the trip, Serena reprimands Offred, who had no say in the matter. In Gilead, even women play a role in perpetuating a world where men are never held accountable.

Moira “I could kill you, you know, said Moira, when Aunt Elizabeth was safely stowed out of sight behind the furnace. I could injure you badly so you would never feel good in your body again. I could zap you with this, or stick this thing into your eye. Just remember I didn’t, if it ever comes to that.” Offred imagines the scenario when her friend Moira escaped from the Red Centre. Although she doesn’t really know what Moira said at that moment, Offred’s imaginings gives insight into how she sees Moira. Even in the most terrible circumstances, Offred believes Moira will do whatever she can to survive...