Chapter 6
English Lit: Edexcel A Level The Handmaid's Tale, topic 2.2.5
Chapter 6 - Summary
Offred and Ofglen walk back from their shopping trip past a church which is now a museum, housing pictures of their "ancestors". The description of their clothing implies they are 17th-century Puritans.
Walking past The Wall
- As they leave the church, they walk past The Wall, which displays the bodies of those who have recently been hanged for illegal activities in Gilead.
- Offred mentions the idea of "salvagings" for the first time in this chapter, which the reader later finds out is the ritualistic killing of offenders. They are normally killed by the Handmaids, who are driven into a frenzy by the idea of sinning against Gilead.
Foeti on signs
- As they look closer at the hooded bodies hanging from The Wall, they see that the men have signs hung around their necks showing foetuses on them. This indicates that these men were doctors who performed abortions, an act that is now illegal in Gilead.
Bodies
- Offred looks at one of the bodies where blood had seeped through the cloth hood and likens the blood to a smile and then to the tulips in Serena Joy's garden.
- She states that she tries to feel "blankness" towards what she sees, for self-preservation and protection if nothing else.
- She comforts herself that the men on the wall can't be Luke, her husband, as he "wasn't a doctor", or as Offred corrects herself "Isn't".
Chapter 6 - Key Quotations
Here are three key quotations from Chapter 6:
"The heads are zeros"
- The heads of the bodies hanging on the wall are covered to conceal the identities of these people.
"...time travellers..."
"These bodies hanging on the Wall are time travellers, anachronisms. They've come here from the past"
"...I must not feel"
- "What I feel towards them is blankness. What I feel is that I must not feel. What I feel is partly relief, because none of these men is Luke. Luke wasn't a doctor. Isn't."
- Offred's overriding feeling is relief that she has no definite proof that her former husband, Luke, was killed in this way.
- Her relief overrides other feelings, like revulsion.
- In the next sentence, she corrects herself from talking about Luke using the past tense to using the present tense.
Test yourself on Chapter 6
Why does Offred say this about the bodies on The Wall?
"The heads are zeros"