Prose AO2

• Naming

  • Handmaids and patronymic system
  • “I have another name, which nobody uses now because its forbidden”
  • The Creature and nomenclature
  • "Devil" and "Daemon"
• Re-employing words

  • Neologisms like ''Prayvaganza" and "Salvaging"
  • The states modification of terms erodes Offred's ability to recall the old ideas that might help her resist
  • Link to observational tone - "A chair. A table. A lamp"
• Re-employing the Bible

  • Jesus scolds Martha for focusing on household chores rather than speaking to him
  • In Gilead, Marthas are forced to do household chores and have their voices taken away
  • "The eyes of God run all over the Earth"
• The risk of speaking

  • Gilead can control what Offred hears and reads, but they cannot control how she interpretates it
  • She interrogates, wilfully misunderstands and plays with Gilead's messages
  • "Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?"
• Small subversions

  • Moira's fierce swearing is part of her own fight against Gilead's twee model of femininity
  • Moira never is referred to with patronymic system
  • Offred finds beauty in the hanged man - "same as the red of the tulips"
• The scrabble games

  • "Larynx" - vocal cords
  • "Valance" - curtains on a bed
  • "Zygote" - fertilising process between sperm and egg
• The limits of language

  • Offred can only truly escape when her narrative and by extension language ends
  • Atwood lets her slip into silence, historical uncertainty and freedom
  • "I step into the darkness within, or else the light"
  • "Our author, then, was one of many"
• Multiple narrators in Frankenstein

  • series of narrative layers, each one corresponding to a psychological state
  • Undermines any sense of narrative stability and replaces it with an experience of incoherence