- Jan 2025
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She's thinking she could have done better herself. She wouldrather do the shopping, get exactly what she wants; she envies me the walk. Inthis house we all envy each other something.
Here, women jealousy
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The difference betweenlie and lay. Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I'd like to get laid
Could actually indicate an abandonment of morality in order to maintain power and stay active as a human being... the duality in meaning is what conveys this.
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send you to the bone-yard.
they kill you after you cannot sexually appeal any longer. What irony when the republic was made to stop sin and fulfill the population demands while being biblically correct... And yet there are institutionalized places for rape, brothels, because the human desire isn't somehting that can be taken away.
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If they aren't that way to begin with, they are after they'vebeen there for a while. When they're unsure, they do a little operation on you,so there won't be any mistakes
Wait they do WHAt? They do an operation to remove the ovaries if they aren't sure? What irony!
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Nobody in here withviable ovaries either, you can see what kind of problems it would cause.
What kind of problems? What surgery, are these women purposefully infertile? Why is it that they don't care about the potential babies from the women who are lesbian? What?
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which power is said to inspire, the state inwhich you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything,absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all.
"Power is said to inspire" -- The source of the immaturity that is in the hands of the most powerful, doing reckless and harmful actions.
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I'm a cloud, congealed around acentral object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am andglows red within its translucent wrapping.
Her true identity, that is, what differentiates her from other women is "cloud" like now, and what is more real is her central object, her womb, her fertility. Much more real than her entirety.
Also symbolizes the way men pick women apart into components rather than as a whole.
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Therewere limits, but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me.
Dissociation of mind and body -- what does this mean?
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Sometimes I wish she would just shut up and let me walk in peace. ButI'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must meansomething.
Even fake news is appealing to her. Why? "It must mean something". Offred and the others each lack meaning in their lives, which is why Serena looks for duty, even if it is all fake.
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once had a garden. I can remember the smell of the turned earth, theplump shapes of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seedsthrough the fingers.
Juxtaposed with the Commander's Wife, the artificial neatness. The fakeness. The inauthenticity
Symbol of fertility dwindling, and she feels that when she had been fertile, time went faster. Now, time is always threatening her, being menacing.
AND, she connects this to the motif of emptiness and fullness. Time passes nicely when she is full -- fertile.
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It is through afield of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in everyway. I put a lot of effort into making such distinctions I need to make them. Ineed to be very clear, in my own mind
And yet, these associations are true. But her sanity won't take it. It also connects to the separation of mind and body that happens. It becomes less a part of her.
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Theymight as well be nowhere, as I am for them. I too am a missing person.
She loses her identity in Gilead. Especially without their names, which plays such a big role in identification. And so she conjures stories of what happened, even if they are contradictory to save herself.
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I see despair comingtowards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart,wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time
Emptiness and time
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- Dec 2024
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His face is beginning to fade,possibly because it wasn't always the same: his face had different expressions,his clothes did not
What does this say about change? And humanity? What does this say about Offred?
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Theywere paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women doit, for men.
This here is what signifies what is wrong with men's perceptions of women. The "long parentheses of nothing", unfilled time, is erotic of women, being devoid of life, to men. Men have always been this way.
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If only I could embroider. Weave, knit, something to do with myhands.
Here it seems that she is envious of Serena Joy's way of passing time.
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- Oct 2024
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iep.utm.edu iep.utm.edu
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For example, ping-pong balls blowing around in a box (like those used in some state lotteries) constitute an analogue model for an ideal gas.
Ideal Gas is a model! It is incorrect based on the fact that gases never have 100% the assumptions it states but it proves to be very useful!
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channels for positively charged ions, which open inresponse to a stimulus such as high temperature, acid, or certain chemicals such as capsaicin in chillipeppers. Entry of positively charged ions causes the thresho
Ohhh, so it's directly (no synapse required). Would this be considered the electrical synapse as stated before?
What stimuluses are there??
Also how do synapses work between sensory cells?
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free nerve endings in the skin
Meaning a "synapse" between this nerve ending and the sensory cells of the skin? How do the sensory cells in the skin propagate a signal? Chemically?
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ecomes hyperpolarized
Which can return back to normal no? Does this just cause a delay?
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Inhibitory neurotransmitters a
What does this stop? Why do these pathways that end up being blocked half-way even exist?
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mple of a drug that blocks reuptake of the neurotransmitter.
How does it stop reuptake? Does this have anything to do with the calcium ions?
This is personally relevant to health class where it taught us that the rats would just have lots stuck in the synaptic cleft.
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e neonicotinoids as an example of a pesticide that blocks synaptic transmission,
Perhaps it just blocks the receptors with itself.
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exogenous
What are exogeneous chemicals? OHHH not created in the body
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Students should understand that ion pumps and channels are clustered at nodes of Ranvie
Yeah it wouldn't make sense for the ions to go into a place of low capacitance.. maybe is the myelin sheath too thick for the channels to be there? WHy?
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both inside and outside an axon
Inside -- different parts have different membrane potentials. Outside -- If Na+ moves in through a channel!
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diffusion of neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters diffuse!!! From high to low concentration, passively. That's why they are inactivated by enzymes and reuptaken to the presynaptic neuron.
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Use acetylcholine as an example
Have to know and note down this specific example
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synaptic cleft
Need to know structure of neurons
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uptake of calcium in response to depolarization
OOh
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presynaptic membrane
Presynaptic? Post? what is the difference?
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signalling chemical inside a neuron
Basically even signalling molecules need intercellular signalling molecules to get released SMH
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ignal can only pass in one direction across a typical synapse
Directionality!
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not electrical,
There are ELECTRICAL SYNAPSES? Where do we find these?
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Use the acetylcholine receptor as an example.
Specific example
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differences between these categories
The differences are between location (source to sink), speed of transmission, and just generally function. How can we define these differences?
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between hormones transported by the blood system and neurotransmitters thatdiffuse across a synaptic gap.
Key difference between neurotransmitters and hormones is their range, distance, duration and speed of effect
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bioluminescence
What is the function of bioluminescence for the adaptation of marine bacteria?
Why do they do this?
What other examples of quorum sensing and why?
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Other drugs are stimulants, speeding up the transmission of electrical impulses, such asamphetamines
Not synapse, then, this works like myelin sheaths.
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It is the opening of potassium channels,causing potassium to leave the interior of the axon, that returns it to a negative potential difference.
Repolarising occurs when K+ goes out, not Na+ going out. Because Na+ going out would not create any sort of refractory period.
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onic distribution is largely reversed.
Because in resting potential K+ is inside and Na+ is outside. This is the reverse when the neuron is repolarising.
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eaches the postsynapticmembrane by diffusion, from high concentration to low concentration
Wow so specific. But yes, passive movement occurs only due to concentration gradients and gradients in general. The neurotransmitter is reuptaken so that concentration gradient is maintained.
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query.libretexts.org query.libretexts.org
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un petit groupe culturel au sein d'une plus grande culture
Définition d'un sous-culture!
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If we could establish an identity for the narrator, we felt, we might bewell on the way to an explanation of how this document — let me call it thatfor the sake of brevity — came into being.
Satirical
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Our job is not tocensure but to understand. (Applause.
How is the moral obviousness of how wrong this is not clear? They refuse to censure (disapprove), echoing that nothing has changed (Piexoto)
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great GeoffreyChaucer; but those of you who know Professor Wade informally, a
Offred's narrative makes connections to Chaucer, the first poet to publish in english. Most connection to the Canterbury tales which talks about pilgrims in a story-telling competition.
So are handmaids on a pilgrimage, and it is a tale and not a biography ?? Is offred a pilgrim looking for her religiousness?
Sexist element in saying she was looking for her lost faith and she was telling a fib, a lie, a myth.
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dy "Iran and Gilead: Two La
Clear connection between Iran and Gilead which connects to Persepolis!
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Denay, Nunavit.
Phonetically: Deny none of it!
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nds of strangers, because it can't be helped.And so I step up, into the d
This last line shows that despite her efforts to obliterate herself and thus (end the novel), it is in vain, there is a hopeful light in her abduction!
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The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open.
I think this is a hopeful ending, as out of the many options she lays out for us on what she can do -- there is a new option, to be taken away. Not to be killed in a salvaging or hung on the wall, but just taken away-- She has opened an escape outside of herself.
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I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known.
Naming is such a powerful mark of identity. In it, it defers what the object/person actually is. The executions are thus called salvagings, the abusers are called Aunts as a form of a mother's harsh love, and the place of happiness is called Jezebel's. In a sense, morality is shifted (ironically) through the use of contradicting nomenclature.
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There are a number of things I could do. I could set fire to the house, forinstance. I could bundle up some of my clothes, and the sheets, and strike myone hidden match. If it didn't catch, that would be that. But if it did, therewould at least be an event, a signal of some kind to mark my exit. A fewflames, easily put out. In the meantime I could let loose clouds of smoke anddie by suffocation.
The longest consideration -- resembling Moira, and a sense of power in her demise and death.
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I could go to Nick's room, over the garage, as we have done before. Icould wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter. Now thatthe need is real.
The most tempting option -- especially with her newfound fear of death. Nick's provides the most humanity.
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Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legsand eyes.
She chooses to do nothing!
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But I feel serene, at peace, pervaded with indifference. Don't let thebastards grind you down.
Numbness, her sense of peace is abject, obliterated, not what we would expect.
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"You could have left me something."
As a wife, she feels she has nothing. Just like Offred, they both have what the other wants and yet each feels like she has nothing -- in that way they are parallels of each other
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They can do what they like with me. I am abject.I feel, for the first time, their true power
"I am abject." -- She was always physically abject, but it was her mind clinging on that proved to be the conflict. Now this shows in the present that her mind has finally been rid of the resistance. She knows she is abject. And that leads to the end of the story.
God?
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I don't want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong ofwhite cloth. I don't want to be a doll hung up on the Wall, I don't want to be awingless angel.
Suddenly this figurative language shows her real fear of death. She is grounded, now. Also a lack of power (wingless angel).
Suddenly her mortality is very real.
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truly, become a chalice.
Symbolism of becoming a chalice (metaphor): Connects to the previous image of Handmaid's needing to empty themselves of all to become a perfect vessel. Being nothing but a container, the chalice symbolises this as it is formally used religiously to hold sacramental/holy wine -- just as Offred is allowing herself to be emptied, mind and body, to carry something sacred (a child) and none more.
Also, because of the communion, it also means that she is turning herself over to God (drinking the blood).
Also, the shape of the chalice is like one of a woman's uterus.
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I'll obliterate myself
There is always an ambiguity in her internal dialogue, but this string of declaratives (as well as obliterate) shows she is destroying this ambiguity that preserves her identity.
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I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate. I'llrenounce.
Stepping down from power, she admits to having had an upper hand throughout her story through her mini rebellions. But she ceases, now.
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Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like.
String of Declaratives + Anaphora : Finally, even her mental resistance has finally gone, signalling the end of her story -- mind and body has been both subjected to Gilead.
The string of declaratives and the fact that the repetition of the anaphora "I'll" is a final show of power. She is showing her active will of submission -- not that she is forced to submit but that she is, on her own will, submitting. In this way it is not only a show of power but a transformation of Offred's fiestyness with Moira in her to her most submissive self, becoming finally a true believer.
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Nick is there, still washing the car, whistling a little. He seems veryfar away.
This foreshadows something?
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I feela great relief. I feel thankful to her. She has died that I may live.
Irony and displays the woman vs woman thing -- but also irony that people find escape in death.
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she says again, her voice now tinny
Yet another viewpoint of the fierce Aunt
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Aunt Lydia stands up, smooths down her skirt with both hands, and stepsforward to the mike. "Good afternoon, ladies," she says, and there is aninstant and earsplitting feedback whine from the PA system. From among us,incredibly, there is laughter.
She's presented also pathetically in front of the wives, diminished of dignity and/or power, and yet she creates such a menacing aura in Offred's eyes so much that she shivers.
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I'd begun to thinkshe existed only in my head, but here she is, a little older. I have a good view,I can see the deepening furrows to either side of her nose, the engraved frown
Just as she has seen Moira, changed. -- Her child, changed. Now she sees Aunt Lydia, older now, it begins to take her out of living in her past and more so in the present. She begins to break down now because her worldview is so skewed.
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The front end of the roperuns up onto the stage. It's like a fuse, or the string of a balloon
Two delicate things (the fuse of a bomb, and a balloon) which both could burst and this creates a tension and suspense for what will happen next.)
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with nothing written on them,not even Faith.
Does this signify her lack of faithfulness, now, to her past?
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There is less need for them. These days we are sowell behaved.I don't want to be telling this story
"I don't want to be telling this story" signifies she is nearly at the end.
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I don't wantto see it anymore. I look at the grass instead. I describe the rope.
Contrast to the peacefulness and acceptance of her visits at the wall, in which she does not distract herself from the figures. It seems she has finally snapped, finally decided she is sick of all that goes on -- which signifies an ending to this story.
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So we have decidedin the best interests of all to discontinue this practice. The Salvagings willproceed without further ado."A collective murmur goes up from us.
The power of silence. Which is in contrast to the influence of gossip, the little tiny whispers. Gilead has even grasped on the little murmurings as a sort of rebellion
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I've begun to shiver.
It is warm but she is shivering
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I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish itshowed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, lesshesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it wereabout love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even aboutsunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.
Anaphora of "I wish", kind of like asking a genie for three wishes, a childlike wonder. Her constant reflection on what happens in her life shows her control over the retelling of what is being told us in the story -- shows her power as the narrator.
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I tell,therefore you are
Reference to Descartes : I think therefore I am. Shows her power as a narrator, as a creator, as a reconstructor. She created her audience, which represents her power
This is a intertextual reference.
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Offred is an anti-hero due to not fitting archetypal hero qualities and instead being passive
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I dismiss these uneasy whispers. I talk too much. I tell him things Ishouldn't.
She is aware what she is doing is out of place and her realism is gone. She is a lot less realistic without Moira.
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Day by day,night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
She is finally letting go of her past -- which is what kept her so complacent and able to survive. But it means she is moving on. She wants to keep him in her memory like she did with Luke, but she has moved on finally.
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With the Commander I close my eyes, even when I am only kissing himgoodnight. I do not want to see him up close. But now, here, each time, I keepmy eyes open.
Direct juxtaposition between the Commander and Nick
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I told you it was bad
She is different now, she is less composed, less cautious -- Does this have anything to do with Moira gone? Her wisdom is gone?
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but I will try nonetheless toleave nothing out. After all you've been through, you deserve whatever I haveleft, which is not much but includes the truth
Ironic considering everything is a reconstruction
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I reac
The second one is much more realistic -- it shows a less romanticised version, but also more emotional intimacy. Which is in contrast to her sexual encounters with the Commander.
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And so it goes. And so.I knew it might only be once. Goodbye, I thought, even at the time,goodbye.
i
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Then I would not know how ignorant I was.OceanofPDF.com
Does this foreshadow something?
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All I can hope for is a reconstruction: The way love feels is alwaysonly approximate
Shows that words and language cannot fully express -- Most happened detailed and not a reconstruction in other scenes, but her sex with Nick is similar to all other Night scenes, all other scenes with herself.
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infinitely sad: faded music, fadedpaper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longerpossible. Without warning I began to cry.
She finally understands that the past is something gone and fictionalised, something she had been stuck in but has already disappeared - especially with the child picture, especially now she has Nick rather than fantasizing about Luke
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Ican see now what it's for, what it was always for: to keep the core of your selfout of reach enclosed, protected
??
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Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder." We are quoting from latemovies, from the time before. And the movies then were from a time beforethat: this sort of talk dates back to an era well before our own.
The present with a reference to the past, what does this time play mean?
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He's undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can'tsee his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I'm not standing. Hismouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it'sbeen so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and watersoftly everywhere, never-ending. I knew it might only be once.
Analyse sentence structure -- How can we demonstrate that: there is true touch, the real physicality as opposed to in the ceremony, as opposed to the Commander trying to force Offred into having sex with him.
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I see thetwo of us, a blue shape, a red shape, in the brief glass eye of the mirror as wedescend. Myself, my obverse.
Showing her double (twin) -- Offred and Serena are doubles. Red and Blue
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Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how.Let's get this over with or you'll be here all night. Bestir yourself. Move yourflesh around, breathe audibly. It's the least you can do
She additionally feels the power dynamic here, even in a time where she is supposed to feel equally in desire -- in sex. She acts, again, performing a duty and not participating in desire
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He is not a monster, Ithink. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have tobe discarded, under the circumstances
Makes reference to Nazi Germany where the women remind themselves that the Commanders are not monsters -- being their mistresses, as they have families, but they do monstrous things.
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That isn't enougheither. "You said you wanted to know."
An excuse, he takes whatever he can to resume his actions, to justify them.
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Alone at last, I think. The fact is that I don't want to be alone with him,not on a bed. I'd rather have Serena there too. I'd rather play Scrabble
Irony in the "Alone at last", as she really hates it. She'd rather have Serena there, in all hypocrisy of her misery, she'd rather go through the ceremony -- in the end none is best, men are men, any sort of rape is uncomfortable for her. The men have not changed.
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I wish I had a toothbrush.I could stand here and think about it, but time is passing.I must b
I (Verb)... No feelings involved, only a to-do list, a automated and carefully controlled execution of instructions. She detaches herself in the day to be objectified, only active during her night
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She's not cute, I would say. She's my mother.Jeez, said Moira, you ought to see mine.I think of my mother
What does the time switch mean or represent?
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he way they used touse up old women, in Russia
Comparison to russia
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Bodily functions at least remain democratic.Everybody shits, as Moira would say
The body is the most democratic, free of power differences as everyone is just a biological animal -- connects to body determining Offred so completely.
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Postmodern literature:
Relative rather than certain interpretations -- using word play and pun.
PM novels explore history from multiple perspectives of how it occured (histories rather than history)
Sometimes metanarrative (multiple narrators) and challenges Grand Narratives of our society (Religion, Science)
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I'd like to tell a story about how Moiraescaped, for good this time. Or if I couldn't tell that, I'd like to say she blewup Jezebel's, with fifty Commanders inside it. I'd like her to end withsomething daring and spectacular,
It is also Offred's inability to see Moira and the subjects of her past as any more than still images of nostalgia. In this way she resigns from her future, longs for her past, allows herself to be complacent in what happens so long as she can remind herself and keep the night to herself.
There is also ironic recreation of the past, active structuring and processing. She is active, ironically, in the night. She is complacent in Gilead during the day. Which says something very odd and wrong about how one can only live in a sinful world -- too perfect and everything becomes stale... she is alive in the past.
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"Don't worry about me," she says. She must know some of what I'mthinking. "I'm still here, you can see it's me.
Does this mark some end of her, some change? Because Moira has such a big influence on her driving force, and now Moira is changed? Also, because Moira "must know some of what I'm thinking", without her saying it, she is acting as a foil, a double, a twin spirit
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Not all of those Gender Traitors end up on the Wall.
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"Put it this way," she says, "they're not too fond of men." She shrugsagain. It might be resignation.
In some way, it is reverse gender norms -- men are salvaged, saved and they are dead. Women are given up on, sent to hell (Jezebel) but they live the happiest of all: What irony!
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"Let, hell, they encourage it. Know what they call this place amongthemselves? Jezebel's. The Aunts figure we're all damned anyway, they'vegiven up on us
Hypocrisy where they are content in hell, especially because the place is called Jezebel's. It is a red-light district in a utopian society. It is a mirror of the old world, only more hidden.
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eally done it to her then, taken away something — what? — that used to beso central to her? And how can I expect her to go on, with my idea of hercourage, live it through, act it out, when I myself do not
Moira's idea in Offred's past has disappeared, just like the shattering of Offred's daughter and her image, when Offred sees her picture. She is overly reliant on an idealised picture of her past to coping with the present, which is ironic because this is what they wanted. Except humans are always looking outside for the solution when it critiques something innate, a lack of completion or satisfaction.
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Shit, it would demoralize meenough. How do you stand it? Everything considered, I like this outfit better
Moira, who lives now in a brothel, is content being sexualised, preferring the sexual treatment and exploitation of the old world to an indifference and repression of sexuality.
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I apply it to the Commander,but it seems too simple for him, too crude. Surely his motivations are moredelicate than that.
It is only vanity, she is being tricked, the world is being manipulated beyond her with all control out of her hands -- and she then surrenders her only control to have sex with nick
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Just another crummy power trip.
Knock to reality just as in her mind -- Offred is a generally much more confused mind who constructs her own story and lives in the past -- but Moira serves always as a wake-up call
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Who?" she whispers back. "That shit you're with? I've had him, he's thepits."
Refreshing reminder of the other side of the commander -- that he is a womanizer.
Tags
- perfect self-awareness
- Love is a warping illusion
- Heaven vs Hell switched
- Moira influence Offred
- Sentence Structure
- Symbol
- Contrast
- Irony
- Iago
- Human Nature
- Technique
- Critique of Humans
- Escape in death
- Bodily Continuity
- Conflict between past and present
- Empty
- Faith
- Sanity
- Moira is Offred's FOIL
- Power of Silence
- Complacency
- End of story
- Real Touch
- Aunt Lydia
- Serena Joy is Offreds double
- ?
- Handmaid as a Vessel
- Offred's End
- Past is gone
- Abject
- Time switch
- Hypocrisy
- Offred
- Mortality
- Ignorance of men
- No change
- Othello
- Inevitable sin
- Chalice
- Control
- Commander
- Persepolis
- Offred being delusional
- Juxtaposition
- Killing of ambiguity
- Time
- Offred breaking down
- Power as a narrator
- History
- Nomenclature
- Power
- Moira
- Imagery
- Double
- Resolution
- Point of view
- Nick
- Reconstruction
- True believer
- Artificial Duty
- Moira is gone
- Men don't understand
- Irony of night and day
- Heaven Vs Hell
Annotators
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Local file Local file
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Selon les chercheurs, ilspourraient donc être utilisés comme support d’apprentissages scolaires, idée que l'UNESCO avait déjà soutenue en 2010
Irony!
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En effet, ils montrent qu’en début de pratique des SMS, c’est le niveau en orthographe traditionnelle quidétermine la forme des SMS envoyés, et non pas les SMS qui influencent négativement l’orthographetraditionnelle
Claim
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La pratique des SMS ou textos n’a pas d’influence sur l’orthographe des collégiens, c’est leurniveau en orthographe qui détermine le type de fautes présent dans les SMS.
C'est une evidence contre le danger perçu du langage SMS
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- Sep 2024
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Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd beboiled to death before you knew it.
How Gilead formed, the gradual but dangerous summation of all these mini beliefs.
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Sometimes Rita will hum, while kneading or peeling: a wordless humming,tuneless, unfathomable
Even when all is outlawed in Gilead, this is a sort of passive rebellion, songs. So much can happen in music.
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Amazing grace, how sweet the soundCould save a wretch like me
Significance of these lyrics? does it imply that songs and words create freedom? That music brings people together (???)
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We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, youhave to work at it.
Complacency is something she actively does to keep her sanity in check.
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A what? I say. There's no point trying to work, Moira won't allow it,she's like a cat that crawls onto the page when you're trying to read.
This comparison of Moira to a cat, to the cat catching mice, to the mice and Aunt Lydia shows the (foreshadows) her eventual power she has over the Aunts.
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If only she wouldn't eat half of them first, I said to Luke.
What? What is this duality of remembering cats, mice and Aunt Lydia? What does the passing of time within the novel do for us?
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Aunt Lydia pressed her hand over her mouth of dead rodent.
Metaphor for lying, crazy old witch?
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Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and barebacks and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings onthem, no wonder those things used to happen
As if they are pieces of meat waiting to be devoured. As if they are responsible for their appeal -- and should hide it. They are being described as food and therefore the object of men's desire.
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It's a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic; but it's something Iunderstand
Something childlike in the commander, which is disturbing given the amount of power and control he has. Recalling her previous life with Luke, with others, old America.
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It's a good place to meetpeople. You can hardly do business without it. We try
When he is asked about people, he automatically assumes men are being asked about, not women
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Impossible to tell what he believes
He's unreadable. He doesn't understand women
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on women, because their eyes look too big to me, toodark and shimmering, their mouths too red, too wet, blood-dipped andglistening; or, on the other hand, too clownish
Why is there a symbol of violence lurking in this scene?
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Jezebel was the wife of Ahab, king of Israel, who made her subjects worship the dieties Baal and Asherah instead of Yahweh, persecuting Yahweh's followers and framing an innocent land owner who refused to sell his land to king Ahab, which lead to his execution.
She was killed for her transgressions against God and the people, thrown out of the window by members of her own court. Her flesh was eaten by stray dogs.
She was then associated with false prophets, and also prostitution (her vanity)
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Idiot, says Moira
Coping mechanism (Strong friend telling her, motivating her)
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evening rental
Objectification
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"Wives aren't allowed.
Mirroring Serena Joy yet again
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I recognize it as Serena Joy's. Hemust have borrowed it from her room
Physical manifestation of her being the double.
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adjust my face, go in.
A facade that she puts on. This hints on the duality?
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Finding evidence that Offred can be considered as Serena Joy's double (repressed self) and vice versa.
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Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as ifI'm nothing more than a woman of sand,
As time has gone past, she is washed away, as she resides in the past. In her night, and she is continually losing herself. Seeing the change in her daughter, it disrupts her storyline, her discipline in her mind.
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Woman in waiting sounds morelike someone in a train station. Waiting is also a place: it is wherever youwait. For me it's this room. I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Betweenother people
She finds she is not significant in her own right.
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From the center was the chandelier, and fromthe chandelier a twisted strip of sheet was hanging down. That's where shewas swinging, just lightly, like a pendulum; the way you could swing as achild, hanging by your hands from a tree branch. She was safe then, protectedaltogether, by the time Cora opened the door. Sometimes I think she's still inhere, with me.I feel buried
She is idolising the tragedy of the handmaid before her as a escaping of her situation, the type of escape you can make in yourself. She also says she's still in here, with Offred
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You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. Wethought 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
He seems to understand that not everyone will be happy in Gilead: A sacrifice for an improvement.
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The problem wasn't only with the women, he says. The main problemwas with the men. There was nothing for them anymore.Nothing? I say. But they had...There was nothing for them to do, he say
He thinks he did the right thing. For men.
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Out there or inside my head,it's an equal darkness. Or light
Signifying the emptiness, the indifference and hopelessness of her situation. And yet there is still light, still a hope that can be salvaged -- hence the title being Desperation
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She wanted ourheads bowed just right, our toes together and pointed, our elbows at theproper angle. Part of her interest in this was aesthetic:
The external is important to Aunt Lydia
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I should have gone outwith him, taken that small responsibility. I should at least have asked himabout it afterward
Passerbyer effect
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I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, Iknew he meant kill.
Widespread thing in Gilead, Luke embodied it the first time. Luke sort of represent gilead.
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keep us from the temptations of our own flesh, to keep us fromhugging ourselves, bare-armed.
Even their own flesh is too much, the solace and comfort of physical touch. The intimacy
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havenot been the first then.
She then knows she is the outside woman. She is the outside woman of the outside woman. She is just one of many pawns to complete the Commander's incompleteness temporarily
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he says; thoughtfully, not sadly.
Academical way of thinking, not an emotional feeling like Offred is. He has no empathy.
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"I thought you were enjoying it," he says lightly, watching me, however,with intent bright eyes. If I didn't know better I would think it was fear. "Iwish you would."
She keeps saying that she knows to see through his intentions and the lack of love that she has realised come through with the Commander. Juxtaposed with "Right now I almost like him."
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"What would you like?" he says, still with that lightness, as if it's amoney transaction merely, and a minor one at that: candy, cigarettes."Besides hand lotion, you mean," I say."Besides hand lotion," he agrees."I would like..." I say. "I would like to know.
This shows the disconnect between the understanding of the severity of the situation. He is still playing with her when she is in fear of her own death, as if it is a simple and equal transaction.
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"Yes," he says. "Poor girl." He means Cora
She clarifies that he means Cora because she also pities the girl that came before her, which is a reflection of what Offred will eventually be. This is a lack of understanding on his side.
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y arms around him.It's only a job, he said, trying to soothe me.
Men don't understand, he is patronising her in the way that a job is not just a job but a sense of power, of individuality and a duty, which Serena Joy keeps trying to find in her knitting and in her garden.
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How Gilead was formed: - Paper money was changed and digitalized - This allowed easily the government to restrict the power of women by cutting their cards. - Shot the president and machine gunned the congress - Blame it on an outside force.
The people overrely on their government for answers.
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She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but shewasn't intending to be funny
The mother has seen this build-up, she predicted that this would happen
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It's you and me upagainst the wall, baby.
Foreshadowing the existence of the Wall, where they are hung up. Play of language
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After the bookswere transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder,
The books are shredded after digitalized, like a sense of replacement
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Because of the man's conflicting feelings, because of his sullen and weak inner emotions, his insufficiency in himself, he causes chaos and ruins the lives of women in very real ways. Such as in creating the conditions of Gilead and tempting Offred with a sense of false hope before she eventually is taken away. His loneliness has caused everything. Even the handmaid before who hung herself.
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I think I lost control then, a little. Razor blades, I said. Books, writing,black-market stuff. All the things we aren't supposed to have. Jesus Christ,you ought to know. My voice was angrier than I'd intended, but he didn't evenwince
The commander doesn't even know the conditions that he created. Like a child playing with and ruining his dolls.
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But she might smell it on you.
Both Offred and the handmaid are shown later to be adulterers, but one is punished for it (made a handmaid) and the man is let to be a commander -- What hypocrisy
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Butter, he said, musing. That's very clever. Butter. He laughed.I could have slapped him.
Juxtaposition of lack of understanding, the disconnect between men and women.
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So there it was, out in the open: his wife didn't understand him.That's what I was there for, then. The same old thing. It was too banal tobe true.
Age-old excuse: Just like the poem by Margaret Atwood about men who are broken inside and seek women, and break them, because they think they are their missing piece.
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Who else could I show itto? he said, and there it was again, that sadness.
What is this commander's sadness? Significance?
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Some of us, he said, retain an appreciation for the old things.
Hypocrisy and injustice that he is the one who got rid of the old world and yet has nostalgia for it. Like North Korea.
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They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended,endless love. The real promise in them was immortality
She indicates that immortality is eternal change!
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I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache.
Desire showing in her body, absurdity of the desire for stimulation, something that used to be infinitely discardable.
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It was a look you'dgive to an almost extinct animal, at the zoo.
This imagery of the complete extinction of what women are and were.
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There is some sort of list, invisible, unspoken. Each iscareful not to hog more than her share of the attention
Unspoken communication shown here.
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They had notyet reached the level of words
Again how language can be subversive and deceptive in comparison with the pure and multifaceted nature of desire and the senses.
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ff, tucked up in bed. Thenshe's the one to get the company, the Wives rustling up the stairs, cluckingand cheerful; she gets the cakes and pies, the jelly, the bouquets of flowersfrom their gardens
This fantasy that is based on something so morbid (illness) -- where freedom has become so relative that we must resort to these. So insincere. So superficial
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. They get sicka lot, these Wives of the Commanders. It adds interest to their lives. As for us,the Handmaids and even the Marthas, we avoid illness.
Illness is a choice, and ironic because they have resorted to self-harm or (not) for entertainment.
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here is something subversiveabout this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards,wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced willclamor to be heard, though silently.
Like flowers, together they can act and subvert, and Serena is in charge of these -- implying she and women together hold a significant power in rebellion, although silent.
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thegrass grows underfoot, at the edges of my eyes there are movements, in thebranches; feathers, flittings, grace notes, tree into bird, metamorphosis runwild.
Relates to how the shadows at the sides, the peeks of her wings can create a full picture which creates a potential for rebellion.
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and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was asurprise they'd not long since been rooted out.
This imagery questions and implies that Gilead weeds out the women by exploiting their natural reproductive qualities.
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What I coveted was the shears
The potential for violence, for cutting the flowers, for almost sabotaging her own reproductive system which is deemed by Gilead to be a gift, a valuable resource. She doesn't want to be valued.
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What I heard first the next morning was a scream and a crash.
Fear still lingers, there's some past experience of something, the world isn't safe enough that clothes on the floor already create suspicion.
An alternate interpretation is that this natural reaction implies that Cora is a very humane character and will foreshadow both that Cora will be an ally and that this handmaid will draw parallels to the one who hanged herself.
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flushed the handful of egg, which could not besalvaged
What does this symbolize? The egg in the earlier chapters (symbol of fertility) going down and being unable to be salvaged.
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It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was,because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave somethingout, there are too many parts, sides, cross currents, nuances; too manygestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never befully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, toomany
She admits her own unreliability by using the physical sensory imagery and therefore showing that language is often insufficient and incapable of fully describing the human experience of the senses.
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is is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It's a reconstructionnow, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should orshouldn't have said, what I should or shouldn't have done, how I should haveplayed it. If I ever get out of here
Post-modernism, shows that everything has been passed through her head and her perspective and that none of this is anything but a story. It is no truth, only a story, that she is constantly reflecting upon and rebuilding, just as the voice memos have been rearranged to make the most sense, to create meaning.
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Moira had power now, she'dbeen set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman
The word play equates freedom to power, to being a whore, to not restraining oneself from innate desires.
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By this time we were treating her theway people used to treat those with no legs who sold pencils on street corners.We avoided her when we could, were charitable to her when it couldn't behelped. She was a danger to us, we knew that.
Funny how this is the reality of things? We distrust those who we pity the most?
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Oh, said Janine weakly,
Same language but different tone, showing something about language?
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h yes, said Janine
Scared of being judged.
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I hear the siren, at a great distance atfirst, winding its way towards me among the large houses and clipped lawns,a thin sound like the hum of an insect; then nearing, opening out, like a flowerof sound opening, into a trumpet. A proclamation, this siren.
Distracts her from the reality of the situation, a crescendo that distracts her from the mundaneness of the world she lives in, although a siren is not anything to be ecstatic about.
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These are the kinds of litanies I use, to compose myself
She periodically brings herself back from the past to regain and maintain her sanity, her composure, her intellect. She tries yet again to separate mind and body when she is treated only as a vessel.
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I revise that: within limits.
The freedom is all relative -- all these pleasures are nothing in the past, but so much now. She has to remind herself to truly compare so she doesn't fall into insanity.
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Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These arethe tests, and I am sane
They test for sanity, because they try and erase the sanity of individuals.
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curtains hanging like drownedwhite hair
Imagery here associated with death, powerlessness, hopelessness, and oblivion. No glory
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But isn't thiseveryone's wet dream, two women at once? They used to say that. Exciting,they used to say
Satirical tone of Offred's narration: What once was considered idealistic is now considered mind-numbing, which comments on the entire state of Gilead. A Utopia is really not as good as it seems.
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Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven'tsigned up for. There wasn't a lot of choice but there was some, and this iswhat I chose.
The fact that none of these words except the word "fucking" can describe it shows that all humanity is taken out of the equation, only beastiality is left. Anything to describe a human experience of sex cannot be used (copulation, rape, making love). No emotion. Just the act itself
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would hurry up.Maybe I'm crazy and this is some new kind of therapy
Trying to rationalise the event
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It's as if he'ssomewhere else, waiting for himself to come, drumming his fingers on thetable while he waits. There's an impatience in his rhythm now.
Disassociation in the mind and body is both for the man and the woman. Both Offred and the commander.
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him, like onehypnotized. If only it were true. If only I could believe
She finds it hard to resist the falling into believing the most obviously logically fake news, which is a fight against her want to believe any news at all.
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His manner is kindly, fatherly; he gazesout at us from the screen, looking, with his tan and his white hair and candideyes, wise wrinkles around them, like everybody's ideal grandfather.
Make it more marketable and trustworthy.
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he prisoner accepts a cigarette fromone of the Angels, puts it awkwardly to his lips with his bound hands. Hegives a lopsided little grin.
Shows the fakeness and propaganda, trying to make Gilead look the way Gilead would like it
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There's a dried flowerarrangement on either end of the mantelpiece, and a vase of real daffodils onthe polished marquetry end table beside the sofa
Dried flower arrangement = she's infertile like the dried flower. It's even more ironic because she likes tending to her garden, "her garden" when the guardian does all the heavy lifting (and so does her handmaid).
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Hating on serena joy
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ossibly she'll put a hand on my shoulder, to steady herself, asif I'm a piece of furniture.
Objectifying
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Or maybe it's a parlor, the kind with a spider and flies
Allusion to a nursery rhyme inviting fly to his home trapping the fly.
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Testifying.
The fact that this is capitalized shows that it is a tradition, not a choice, an event.
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the lost eyelashes of someone who's been in a fire
Does this still connect to the motif of eyes, where she has lost the ability to see for herself, the truth?
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Her fault, her fault, her faul
Repetition: Sort of a brainwashing session.
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For a moment, even thoughwe knew what was being done to her, we despised her
The threat of public humiliation.
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We meant it, which is the bad part
Effective indoctrination
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blanktime
Idea of emptiness
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washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig
Imagery that she is like breeding stock
Tags
- Ever changing
- Foreshadowing
- Fight for the mind
- Language
- Hope
- Violence
- Prostitution and freedom
- Sexual Assault
- Cora
- Indifference
- Empathy
- Irony
- Gilead's formation
- Word play
- Small rebellions
- Conflict between past and present
- Sanity
- Lack of understanding
- Dehumanization
- Complacency
- Loneliness
- Luke
- ?
- Objectification of women
- Gilead
- Fear still lingering
- Hypocrisy
- Fertility
- Salvaging
- External
- Ignorance of men
- Man's insecurities ruin women
- Extinction of women
- Hopelessness
- Music is rebellion
- Illness
- Commander's ignorance
- Disconnect between man and women
- Pieces of meat
- Commander
- Pawns
- Margaret Atwood
- Utopia is hell
- Mind and Body DIsassociation
- Poem
- Offred being of high value
- parallel between offred and previous handmaid
- Self-sabotage
- Insincerity
- Metaphor
- Symbol of egg
- Beastiality
- Breeding Stock
- Eyes and truth
- Offred's Mother
- Senses
- Imagery
- Exploitation of Reproduction
- Context
- Value
- Men are incomplete
- Rational men
- Freedom to and freedom from
- Reconstruction
- Satirical
- Artificial Duty
- Amazing Grac
- Men don't understand
Annotators
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