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.
8 Matching Annotations
- Oct 2024
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- Sep 2024
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wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as onecomposes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.
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.
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Idon't want to look at something that determines me so completely.
A vote towards bodily continuity.
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- Aug 2024
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This passage conflates Elio’s desire with the physical body. By connecting ejaculation with therevealing of his secret, Elio grounds his desire in the physical action of his body. With thismetaphor linking speaking and masturbating, he attempts to convince himself that the confessionhas been completed, resulting in a physical act.
The only notable quote i think would support my argument. The passage of words to physical truth coming out of his body in his semen. This links the confession of the verbal to the truthful (and permanent) confession of the physical.
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’d commit the ultimateindignity, and with this indignity show him that the shame was all his, notmine, that I had come with truth and human kindness in my heart and that Iwas leaving it on his sheets now to remind him how he’d said no to a youngman’s plea for fellowship.
"Truth" is embedded in his semen that he will lay on the sheets after lots of fuddling trials by making excuses. In the end it is all his sexuality that will confess all truth and human kindness
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This was probably the firsttime in my life that I spoke to an adult without planning some of what I wasgoing to say. I was too nervous to plan anything
His bodily reaction prevents him from planning, from taking the spontaneity and truthfulness of his expression out. His body cannot lie, it is representative of his identity and overcomes the deception of words.
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- Jul 2024
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I would have blushed, and blushed because I had blushed, fuddledwith words and ultimately broken down—and then where would I be? Whatwould he say?Better break down now, I thought, than live another day juggling all ofmy implausible resolutions to try again later
Shows that true identity is most transparent (Cor cordium; heart of hearts) through the expression of the body. The body never lies. The blushing and the fuddling would have given it all, and therefore is the basis of bodily continuity
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- May 2024
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Would I like him, wouldhe like me, would either of us understand why the other became who he is,would either be surprised to learn that each of us had in fact run into anOliver of one sort or another, man or woman, and that we were verypossibly, regardless of who came to stay with us that summer, one and thesame person still?
He's stating that no matter what happened, man or woman he loved, no matter who it was, Elio is still Elio no matter what. Has he finally found the truth that he does not need to condense or simplify himself to reach a substance, an essence? That simply being in his own body is Elio enough to be Elio?
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