The Handmaid's Tale

Back in her room, Offred thinks that “something has changed, now, tonight” and considers, “I can ask for something. Possibly not much; but something” (153). Aunt Lydia presents men as “sex machines” who “only want one thing” (153), and Offred wonders “how to fit the Commander into this” (154). She concludes that “I need to take it seriously, this desire of his” (154).

Offred remembers a documentary about the Holocaust and an interview “with a woman who had been the mistress of a man who had supervised one of the camps where they put the Jews, before they killed them” (154). The man “had been cruel and brutal,” but the woman insisted that he “was not a monster” (155). Offred considers, “All this she would have believed, because otherwise how could she have kept on living?” (156).

Offred is suddenly desperate to laugh but knows that she must not. She “cram[s] both hands over my mouth […]” and crawls into the closet. After the laughter “passes, like an epileptic fit,” she “trace[s] the tiny scratched writing” on the closet floor, “as if it’s a code in Braille” (156). 

Offred wakes to a crash as Cora drops a breakfast tray in her room, fearing that Offred is dead, rather than asleep, as she is still lying in the closet. Offred explains that she was “just dizzy” (159) and may have fainted, quickly dismissing the idea that it is because she is pregnant.

Offred and the Commander “have an arrangement,” and she visits him “two or three nights a week” (162), going only when Nick secretly signals the Commander’s interest by wearing his cap at an angle. On the second visit, after playing Scrabble, the Commander gives her “a little present,” a women’s magazine, “once common enough” (164) but now outlawed and taboo. Offred “want[s] it with a force that [makes] the ends of my fingers ache” (164).

On the third night, Offred asks for some hand lotion and explains that Handmaids usually make do with butter. He laughs, and Offred “could have slapped him” (167). He offers to get her the hand lotion “as if indulging a child’s wish for bubble gum” (167).

When the Commander returns with it on the fourth night, Offred explains that she cannot keep it in her room because “someone would find it” (167), and he asks “Why? […] as if he really didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t” (167). She explains that Handmaids’ rooms are searched for “razor blades. Books, writing, black-market stuff […] Jesus Christ, you ought to know” (168). He does not “even wince” at her anger and says that she may keep the lotion in his study.

At the next Ceremony, “there [is] an awkwardness now that there [hasn’t] been before” (169). Just as Offred “would pretend not to be present, not in the flesh,” so, too, had the Commander performed in “[t]his state of absence” (169) during previous Ceremonies. Now the Commander is “no longer a thing to [Offred]” but a human being, and the Ceremony itself feels “indecorous, an embarrassing breach of propriety” (170). Offred’s hatred of Serena Joy is “no longer pure and simple” and is now mixed with both jealousy and guilt.

During the Ceremony, the Commander “move[s] his hand up as if to touch my face” (171). Offred shifts out of the way and later tells him not to do that again: “You could get me transferred […] To the Colonies […] Or worse” (171). He apologizes and explains that he finds the Ceremonies “[i]mpersonal” (171). She asks, “How long did it take you to find that out?” (171).

Offred acknowledges that she is “his mistress” and is “happier than I was before,” explaining that seeing him gives her “something to do, for one thing” and that “I don’t love the Commander or anything like it, but he’s of interest to me” (172). Likewise, “to him I’m no longer merely a usable body” (172).

While out walking, Offred and Ofglen realize that neither of them is actually “a true believer” (177), and Ofglen reveals that she is part of a secret underground movement (later revealed to be called Mayday) and invites Offred to join them. Offred feels “hope […] rising in me, like sap in a tree” (178). A “black van with a white-winged eye on the side” (178) pulls up, and a man is dragged inside. Offred feels “relief” that it “wasn’t me” (179).

Offred remembers Moira coming out as gay and “a time when we didn’t hug” until Moira reassured Offred that “I didn’t turn her on” (181). She also remembers the rise of Gilead, “the catastrophe, when they shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress” (183), blaming it “on the Islamic fanatics, at the time” (183). Soon there was censorship of the media, “the Pornomarts were shut,” and “roadblocks began to appear, Identipasses” (183).

Offred’s boss told her and her colleagues that “I have to let you go […] It’s the law, I have to” (185). At the same time, her bank account was frozen, and all her money was transferred to Luke. Moira told her that they froze “[a]ny account with an F on it instead of an M” (187).

Luke tried to console her, telling her “[i]t’s only a job” and “[y]ou know I’ll always take care of you” (188). She though that “already he’s starting to patronize me” and then, “already you’re starting to get paranoid” (188). Later, she realizes that “[h]e doesn’t mind this […] Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other’s, any more. Instead, I am his” (191-92).

There were marches protesting the new conditions until “the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started” (189). Offred did not attend the demonstrations because “Luke said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him and her” (189).

Without a job, Offred “started doing more housework, more baking [and] tried not to cry at mealtimes” (189). Offred remembers her mother attending feminist protests when she was younger and chastising Offred for being prudish and conservative.

Offred sits comfortably in the Commander’s study, her body “lax, cosy [sic] even” while the Commander is “positively daddyish” in the way “he likes to think I’m being entertained; and I am, I am” (193). He has started allowing her to read his books while he sits and watches.

Offred asks him what Nolite te bastardes carborundorum means, and he explains that it is “just a joke” (196) that schoolboys used to make in pig Latin. It means “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” (197). He shows her the phrase written on an old schoolbook.

Seeing that, Offred realizes that the previous Handmaid must have been in the Commander’s study, too, and asks him about her. “[T]houghtfully, not sadly,” he explains that “she hanged herself” because “Serena found out” (197).