Chapters 41 & 42
English Lit: Edexcel A Level The Handmaid's Tale, topic 9.1.21
Chapter 41 - Key Quotations
Here are five key quotations from Chapter 41:
"Salvaging" and puns
- "Salvaging"
- In the Philippines, this word describes being executed without trial - the opposite of the usual connotations of ‘salvaging' (saving).
- "I tell, therefore you are"
- These words originate from Descartes, a 17th-century French philosopher. He realised that, as he was thinking about existence, he must exist.
- "So I will myself to go on"
- A pun - Offred is describing the effort of telling a story about her own debauchery.
"Real name... Freedom"
- "I tell him my real name and feel that therefore I am known"
- Names are such an important aspect of identity that Gilead takes away names and Handmaids are just Of(Commander) + their tattooed number.
- Offred feels more like she's an actual person when she tells Nick her proper name.
- "I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom"
- This goes back to the idea of context determining everything. Freedom means different things to Offred at different times.
Chapter 42 - Key Quotations
Here are four key quotations from Chapter 42:
"Bell is tolling..."
- "The bell is tolling"
- This comes from a sermon by 17-century priest and poet John Donne. Atwood is reminding us that we're involved in deaths carried out in our name.
- "I don't want to be telling this story"
- This line is isolated. Is this Offred's disgust at watching something so grim, or is this Atwood's despair that public executions still take place in various parts of the world?
__"Same... bus... vestment"
- "The same platitudes, the same phrases, the same slogans"
- Cliches are often used to cover lacking emotion or to distance the speaker from taking responsibility.
- "As if she's being helped up the steps of a bus... the noose... like a vestment"
- A vestment is a religious robe. Atwood uses an everyday and religious image - both jarring with the situation at hand - to make the salvaging seem even more horrific.
Test yourself on Chapters 41 & 42
Who do the following words originate from?
"I tell, therefore you are"