The Handmaid's Tale

While out on one of their routine shopping trips, Ofglen tells Offred that the resistance movement has a secret password to subtly find out who is a member. The password is “Mayday” (212), and Offred recalls Ofglen testing her with it long before she knew the meaning. When they depart, Ofglen says, “I’ll see you later” (213), rather than their prescribed phrase.

Back at home, Serena mentions to Offred that the Commander may be incapable of impregnating her, despite Gileadean dogma insisting that “it’s only women who can’t, who remain stubbornly closed, damaged, defective” (215). She proposes that Offred try “[a]nother man” (215) and suggests Nick as a candidate. Offred agrees. Serena offers to try to get her a picture of “your little girl” (216) and gives Offred a cigarette.

The Commander “has taken to drinking in [Offred’s] presence,” and he sometimes “becomes silly, and cheats at Scrabble” (220). He encourages Offred to do the same, and they make up funny words while “giggling over them” (220). She remembers Ofglen informing her that the Commander is high-ranking, “at the top, and I mean the very top” (221).

Sometimes the Commander “wishes to explain things, justify himself” (221). He explains that “the main problem was with the men” because “sex was too easy […] There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for” (221). Discussing the results of their efforts to “do better,” he clarifies, “Better never means better for everyone” (222).

He also claims that “we’ve given them more than we’ve taken away,” citing dating problems, the “meat market” (231), and absent or abusive husbands and fathers as examples of previous hardships and claiming that “[t]his way they’re protected, they can fulfil their biological destinies in peace” (231). When he asks, “What did we overlook?”, Offred claims, “Love” (231), but he counters that:“Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better” (232). 

Offred attends a “WOMEN’S PRAYVAGANZA” (225), which are held “for group weddings” (232). A group of “white-veiled girls” (233) are given to a group of Angels as a reward for their service. Referring to the Commander, Ofglen tells Offred, “We know you’re seeing him alone” (234) and that she should “find out […] [a]nything [she] can” (235).

Back in her room, Offred thinks, “I don’t have to tell anything, to myself or anyone else” and that she “could withdraw” (237) into herself. She considers the phrase “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” and how the Handmaid who wrote it died, and thinks, “Why fight?” (237). Serena enters and shows Offred the picture of her daughter. Offred sees her “[s]o tall and changed” and thinks that time “has washed over me, washed me away” (240).

When Offred next visits the Commander, he says he has “a little surprise” (241). He gives her a skimpy garment decorated with feathers and sequins and tells her to “paint your face too” because “[t]onight I’m taking you out” (243).

Nick drives them, passing through check points as Offred hides on the floor of the car. Offred and the Commander enter what used to be a hotel and is now “full of women” dressed in everything from “olden-days lingerie, shortie nightgowns, baby-doll pyjamas” (246) to “bathing suits” and “cheerleaders’ outfits” (247).

Offred says that she thought “this sort of thing was strictly forbidden,” and the Commander says that it is “officially […] But everyone’s human, after all” (248). When she asks, “Who are these people?” he explains that they are officers, and she has to clarify: “No […] I mean the women” (249). The Commander says that “some of them are real pros,” but there is “a sociologist” and “a lawyer, that one was in business, an executive position” (249).

Offred sees Moira in “a black outfit” with bunny ears and “black net stockings and black high heels” (251). Moira spots her, and they use their “old signal” (251) to arrange to meet in the toilets. Offred explains that the Commander “smuggled me in,” and Moira says the commanders “get a kick out of it […] [because] your gang are supposed to be such chaste vessels […] Just another crummy power trip” (255).

Moira also talks about her escape, her recapture, and her life at “Jezebel’s” (262). She tells Offred to find “some way of getting in here” and explains that you get “three or four good years before your snatch wears out and they send you to the boneyard” and that “the food’s not bad and there’s drink and drugs, if you want it, and we only work nights” (261). Offred tells her, “You don’t mean it” and thinks, “I don’t want her to be like me. Give in, go along, save her skin” (261).

Moira says, “I saw your mother” (264) in a film about the Colonies and that “[s]he might as well be [dead] […] You should wish it for her” (264). Offred thinks of her mother “sweeping up deadly toxins” and hopes that “her cockiness […] will get her out of this” but knows “this isn’t true” (265).  

The Commander takes Offred up to a private room. She lies down with him on the bed but does not “want to be alone with him” (266). He says that they could “jump the gun” on the Ceremony, that he thought she “might enjoy it for a change” (266). She tells herself that “he is not a monster” and that she has to “[f]ake it […] [m]ove your flesh around, breathe audibly. It’s the least you can do” (267). 

Offred waits in her room, “having shed the spangles, scraped off the lipstick” (271). Serena comes to her at midnight and sends her out to Nick’s room above the garage. He lets her in, and with “[n]o preliminaries,” without talking, treating it like “an assignment,” Nick’s “mouth is on me, his hands […] and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him” (273).

Offred reveals that “I made that up. It didn’t happen that way” (273). Instead, he offers her a drag on his cigarette and “looks at me unsmiling” (273). Clumsily, she says she does not have much time, and he offers to “just squirt it in a bottle and you could pour it in” (273). She thinks that “[p]ossibly he feels used” (273).

He jokingly says, “You come here often?” (274), and they smile. Then, “without warning” (274), Offred begins to cry. Nick “puts his arms around me, strokes my back […] for comfort” (274). He kisses her and says, “No romance […] Okay?” meaning “don’t risk yourself for me, if it should come to that” (274). 

Offred admits to having made up the sound of thunder to “cover up the sounds, which I am ashamed of making” before admitting that, actually, “[i]t didn’t happen that way either” but that she is “[n]ot sure how it happened; not exactly” (275). Afterward, she feels that she has betrayed Luke, not through “the thing itself but my own response” (275).