- Oct 2024
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
Tags
- Offred
- Power
- Moira is Offred's FOIL
- Irony of night and day
- Offred being delusional
- Time switch
- Offred breaking down
- Critique of Humans
- Offred's End
- End of story
- Complacency
- True believer
- Moira is gone
- Technique
- Moira influence Offred
- perfect self-awareness
- Time
- Human Nature
- Moira
- Contrast
Annotators
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- Sep 2024
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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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