English a level - the handmaid's tale

quotes

2 quotes from chapter 30 as Offred addresses God, expressing the suffering Gilead creates

“they force you to kill, within yourself”

“you might even provide a heaven for them. we need you for that. hell we can make for ourselves”

2 quotes from the salvagings Offred participates in in Chapters 42-43

“my complicity in the death of this woman”

“I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse”

2 quotes showing a moment of Offred’s weakness in chapter 45

“I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent. I’ll abdicate. I’ll announce”

“I feel, for the first time, their true power”

quote from Offred highlighting her unreliability as a narrator in chapter 23

“it is a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed, rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said”

2 quotes from Offred in chapter 23 retelling her meeting with the Commander in his office

“two-legged wombs”

“the blood coming out of him, hot as soup, sexual, over my hands”

2 quotes form chapter 21 highlighting the suffering of the handmaid’s after Janine gives birth

“but who can remember pain, once it’s over?”

“each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby”

quote about identity from chapter 17

“I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do… I want to steal something”

quote highlighting the natural world in chapter 17

“the sky is hard to make out because of the searchlight… the moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware”

2 quotes about Serena Joy in chapter 3

“they aren’t scarves for grown men but for children. sometimes I think the scarves aren’t sent to the angels at all, but unravelled”

“put it [a cigarette] between her lips and gripped it”

quote from chapter 1 showing Offred’s desperation for escape

“something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-off, we still had out bodies”

quote from chapter 1 that can be read as Atwood’s call to take action

“how did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? it was in the air: and it was still in the air”

2 quotes from chapter 46, the last chapter of the novel

“faith is only a word, embroidered”

“and so i step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.”

2 quotes from chapter 27 as Offred discovers Ofglen is a member of the resistance

“I want to laugh, shout, hug her”

“holy rollers”

quote from Moira describing power at Jezebels in chapter 37

“crummy power trip”

quote from chapter 36 describing what it is to be free

“freedom, like everything else, is relative”

2 quotes chapter 18 referring to human nature and perseverance

“I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow”

“nobody dies from lack of sex, it’s lack of love we die from”

2 quotes from chapter 15 about the bible

“it’s an incendiary device”

“blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up”

quote from chapter 15 about gender

“it must be hell, to be a man like that. it must be just fine. it must be hell. it must be very silent”

quote about the indoctrination of the regime from chapter 5

“Gilead is within you”

quote about identity from chapter 2

“red: the colour of blood, which defines us”

quote from chapter 41 showing what is essentially doublethink

“being here with him (nick) is a safety … this is a delusion, of course. this is one of the most dangerous places i could be”

chapter 33 quote showing destruction of environment

“they burn you up with the garbage like an unwoman. so forget it”

quote from chapter 30 showing tensions between human and natural world

“nothing moves in the searchlight moonlight”

what is the appendix called

‘The Historical Notes’

Sufi proverb from Atwood’s epigraph

“in the desert there is no sign that says, thou shalt not eat stones.”

quote from chapter 12 about identity as Offred is in the bath

“I avoid looking down at my body… I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely”

quote from chapter 6 as Offred looks at the bodies on the wall

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

quote showing Offred’s growing complacency as she starts to secretly see Nick

“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations”

quote about freedom while Offred and Ofglen walk back home by the river

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze”

quote describing Gilead’s rise to power from chapter 28

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets.”

5 quotes from chapter 41 about Offred’s affair with Nick

“Then i would knock softly, a beggars knock”

“I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known”

“He seems indifferent to most of what i have to say, alive only to the possibilities of my body”

“neither of us says the word love, not once. it would be tempting fate”

“I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom”

quote from chapter 45 as Offred gives up her bodily autonomy

“I want to keep on living in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others”

quote from chapter 39 in Jezebels

“I lie there like a dead bird. he is not a monster, I think”

quote from Aunt Lydia on love in chapter 34 (recalled during the group wedding")

“love is not the point”

3 quotes about the garden from chapter 3

“large and tidy”

“the wives have gardens, it’s something for them to order and maintain and care for”

“the tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they have been cut and are beginning to heal”

2 quotes illustrating the ceremony in chapter 16

“this is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being”

“I lie on my back”