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• 18

  Offred talks about her 3 beliefs about Luke: that he was killed quickly, he’s being kept prisoner, he escaped and joined the resistance.
• I believe Luke is lying face down in a thicket…I also believe that Luke is sitting up, in a rectangle somewhere, grey cement, on a ledge or the edge of something, a bed or chair…I also believe that they didn’t catch him…that he made it, reached the back, swam the river, crossed the border
• Someone must be out there, taking care of things. I believe in some resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light. There must be a resistance, or where do all the criminals come from, on the television?
• It’s this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive. I believe in the message.
• The things I believe can’t all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe in all of them, all three versions of Luke, at one and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it