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!

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?

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?

Which can return back to normal no? Does this just cause a delay?

What does this stop? Why do these pathways that end up being blocked half-way even exist?

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.

Perhaps it just blocks the receptors with itself.

What are exogeneous chemicals? OHHH not created in the body

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?

Inside -- different parts have different membrane potentials. Outside -- If Na+ moves in through a channel!

Neurotransmitters diffuse!!! From high to low concentration, passively. That's why they are inactivated by enzymes and reuptaken to the presynaptic neuron.

Have to know and note down this specific example

Need to know structure of neurons

OOh

Presynaptic? Post? what is the difference?

Basically even signalling molecules need intercellular signalling molecules to get released SMH

Directionality!

There are ELECTRICAL SYNAPSES? Where do we find these?

Specific example

The differences are between location (source to sink), speed of transmission, and just generally function. How can we define these differences?

Key difference between neurotransmitters and hormones is their range, distance, duration and speed of effect

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?

Not synapse, then, this works like myelin sheaths.

Repolarising occurs when K+ goes out, not Na+ going out. Because Na+ going out would not create any sort of refractory period.

Because in resting potential K+ is inside and Na+ is outside. This is the reverse when the neuron is repolarising.

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.

Définition d'un sous-culture!

Satirical

How is the moral obviousness of how wrong this is not clear? They refuse to censure (disapprove), echoing that nothing has changed (Piexoto)

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.

Clear connection between Iran and Gilead which connects to Persepolis!

Phonetically: Deny none of it!

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!

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.

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.

The longest consideration -- resembling Moira, and a sense of power in her demise and death.

The most tempting option -- especially with her newfound fear of death. Nick's provides the most humanity.

She chooses to do nothing!

Numbness, her sense of peace is abject, obliterated, not what we would expect.

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

"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?

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.

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.

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.

Stepping down from power, she admits to having had an upper hand throughout her story through her mini rebellions. But she ceases, now.

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.

This foreshadows something?

Irony and displays the woman vs woman thing -- but also irony that people find escape in death.

Yet another viewpoint of the fierce Aunt

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.

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.

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.)

Does this signify her lack of faithfulness, now, to her past?

"I don't want to be telling this story" signifies she is nearly at the end.

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.

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

It is warm but she is shivering

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.

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.

Offred is an anti-hero due to not fitting archetypal hero qualities and instead being passive

She is aware what she is doing is out of place and her realism is gone. She is a lot less realistic without Moira.

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.

Direct juxtaposition between the Commander and Nick

She is different now, she is less composed, less cautious -- Does this have anything to do with Moira gone? Her wisdom is gone?

Ironic considering everything is a reconstruction

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.

i

Does this foreshadow something?

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.

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

??

The present with a reference to the past, what does this time play mean?

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.

Showing her double (twin) -- Offred and Serena are doubles. Red and Blue

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

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.

An excuse, he takes whatever he can to resume his actions, to justify them.

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.

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

What does the time switch mean or represent?

Comparison to russia

The body is the most democratic, free of power differences as everyone is just a biological animal -- connects to body determining Offred so completely.

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)

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.

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

?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Refreshing reminder of the other side of the commander -- that he is a womanizer.

Irony!

Claim

C'est une evidence contre le danger perçu du langage SMS

How Gilead formed, the gradual but dangerous summation of all these mini beliefs.

Even when all is outlawed in Gilead, this is a sort of passive rebellion, songs. So much can happen in music.

Significance of these lyrics? does it imply that songs and words create freedom? That music brings people together (???)

Complacency is something she actively does to keep her sanity in check.

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.

What? What is this duality of remembering cats, mice and Aunt Lydia? What does the passing of time within the novel do for us?

Metaphor for lying, crazy old witch?

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.

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.

When he is asked about people, he automatically assumes men are being asked about, not women

He's unreadable. He doesn't understand women

Why is there a symbol of violence lurking in this scene?

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)

Coping mechanism (Strong friend telling her, motivating her)

Objectification

Mirroring Serena Joy yet again

Physical manifestation of her being the double.

A facade that she puts on. This hints on the duality?

Finding evidence that Offred can be considered as Serena Joy's double (repressed self) and vice versa.

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.

She finds she is not significant in her own right.

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

He seems to understand that not everyone will be happy in Gilead: A sacrifice for an improvement.

He thinks he did the right thing. For men.

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

The external is important to Aunt Lydia

Passerbyer effect

Widespread thing in Gilead, Luke embodied it the first time. Luke sort of represent gilead.

Even their own flesh is too much, the solace and comfort of physical touch. The intimacy

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

Academical way of thinking, not an emotional feeling like Offred is. He has no empathy.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

The mother has seen this build-up, she predicted that this would happen

Foreshadowing the existence of the Wall, where they are hung up. Play of language

The books are shredded after digitalized, like a sense of replacement

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.

The commander doesn't even know the conditions that he created. Like a child playing with and ruining his dolls.

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

Juxtaposition of lack of understanding, the disconnect between men and women.

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.

What is this commander's sadness? Significance?

Hypocrisy and injustice that he is the one who got rid of the old world and yet has nostalgia for it. Like North Korea.

She indicates that immortality is eternal change!

Desire showing in her body, absurdity of the desire for stimulation, something that used to be infinitely discardable.

This imagery of the complete extinction of what women are and were.

Unspoken communication shown here.

Again how language can be subversive and deceptive in comparison with the pure and multifaceted nature of desire and the senses.

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

Illness is a choice, and ironic because they have resorted to self-harm or (not) for entertainment.

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.

Relates to how the shadows at the sides, the peeks of her wings can create a full picture which creates a potential for rebellion.

This imagery questions and implies that Gilead weeds out the women by exploiting their natural reproductive qualities.

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.

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.

What does this symbolize? The egg in the earlier chapters (symbol of fertility) going down and being unable to be salvaged.

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.

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.

The word play equates freedom to power, to being a whore, to not restraining oneself from innate desires.

Funny how this is the reality of things? We distrust those who we pity the most?

Same language but different tone, showing something about language?

Scared of being judged.

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.

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.

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.

They test for sanity, because they try and erase the sanity of individuals.

Imagery here associated with death, powerlessness, hopelessness, and oblivion. No glory

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.

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

Trying to rationalise the event

Disassociation in the mind and body is both for the man and the woman. Both Offred and the commander.

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.

Make it more marketable and trustworthy.

Shows the fakeness and propaganda, trying to make Gilead look the way Gilead would like it

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).

Hating on serena joy

Objectifying

Allusion to a nursery rhyme inviting fly to his home trapping the fly.

The fact that this is capitalized shows that it is a tradition, not a choice, an event.

Does this still connect to the motif of eyes, where she has lost the ability to see for herself, the truth?

Repetition: Sort of a brainwashing session.

The threat of public humiliation.

Effective indoctrination

Idea of emptiness

Imagery that she is like breeding stock

Sensory is so important.

She is trying her best in an internal conflict to dissociate herself from the things Gilead does to her body (the commander in the ceremony, the doctor), but it is difficult because her body determines her so completely.

She tries to fight for her mind, even when the society she is in tries NOT to objectify women -- by preventing men from expressing their desire for them.

What does this darkening of her hair mean?

Which contradicts her desire to treat her body, to have skin cream, forcing her to use even butter. Both women are pitted against each other because they have one but not the other -- one has their fertility and the other has their vanity.

She wishes to scrub herself of all the rape that happens to her?

Representing Gilead.

This ideological difference, what does it mean? What contributed to the formation of Gilead, and does it mean that Luke was right about there being differences that cannot be erased, cannot be separated?

The bath is a place of/vessel of imagination.

A vote towards bodily continuity.

This is symbolic of rape, which is ironic because now Offred seeks hope in getting raped -- to be immorally penetrated is a sign of hope. Even when their society's aim was to grant women freedom from rape.

Even though his words are reassuring, his power and the underlying tone. of rape still hangs. This is ironic because Gilead should be free from rape, of sin. And yet Gilead is turning women into sin, out of desperation. A utopia becomes more of a living hell than any sinful world.

Very creepy for our society now

In this sense hope is tied irreversibly with fear. Having the freedom to do things is also the opportunity to get raped, to have frightening things happening. But that is hope, hope is fear, hope is an absence of certainty.

?

Maybe signifies a sense of intimacy. Something she's been wanting for a while.

Margaret Atwood implies that language is the tool of humanity and the tool of survival. They assimilate information through the use of stories, most importantly, an adaptation from long ago, as a melting pot of rationality and feeling, thought feeling machines/ entities are human.

What could this symbolize with what happened then to women's bodies?

Freedom from and freedom to -- Their intentions were pure but the fact that women's bodies "went up into flames" meant the problem was not resolved, only got worse. Intention vs. Execution.

It criticises modern morals and the good and bad.

Criticises the trajectory of the feminism fight, which is ironic because a society in which women suffer is created by the fight for women's right in itself.