Chapters 40-46
Serena Joy is the one that arranged the secret meeting between Offred and Luke. Offred feels this is a betrayal because she doesn’t know if Luke is dead or not; she states that she believes if she knew he was dead she wouldn’t feel so guilty.
She feels unsure as to what really happened between them, whether it was passionately romantic, extremely awkward and impersonal, or in a somewhat gray area between those extremes. She claims that she feels like this because recreating how love feels can only be “approximate.” Offred and Nick’s relationship can be seen as a reflection to the past, a sexual relationship without the intention of ties to romance. However, because of their situation, their relationship is more complex than just “friends with benefits.” Offred views Nick as her lifeline and begins to develop feelings for him, but it is unclear exactly how Nick views Offred.
Ofglen tries to get Offred to break into the Commander’s office at night and steal important documents with classified information on Gilead. Offred responds that she can’t because she’s too scared and not competent enough to be successful, but the truth is that Offred just doesn’t want to because she is satisfied with her life now because of her relationship with Nick. Offred and Ofglen’s relationship becomes strained as Ofglen begins to lose hope in Offred and is disappointed, and the women become distanced from each other.
A Salvaging is a public execution of Gilead’s law breakers that is divided up by gender and district; women’s Salvagings are less frequent/common. Aunt Lydia is in charge of the ritual, and the victims are people who have broken the laws. The victims of this Salvaging is a wife and two handmaids- the crimes of the convicted used to be announced but now that no longer happens because there were “copycat” crimes.
A Particicution is an execution of a male criminal, in this instance it is an accused rapist who also caused a miscarriage, by the group of handmaids.The rules are that in between whistles, the handmaids are allowed to do whatever they want to the man. The handmaids savagely beat the man to death. Ofglen is the first to attack by kicking the man in the head viciously, but she does this because she claims he wasn’t really a rapist but rather a member of the resistance so she wanted to knock him out to save him the pain. She wants to make love right then after the rituals. This could be because she has been exposed to the animalistic side of her fellow handmaids and now desires for something animalistic herself- sex.
Offred’s first indication is that Ofglen is late and then notices that she looks wrong as she comes closer. Offred describes her as looking “altered” and “shrunk.” She discovers that Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the van of the Eyes coming to take her. The new Ofglen told herself this right before they departed. Offred most likely experienced the emotions of fear, pain from loss and loneliness, and panic.
Serena confronts Offred because she discovers Offred’s relationship with the Commander when she finds lipstick on the cloak and the used sequined outfit. Offred reacts to this by being in a state of almost sickeningly calmness and “orderliness.” She simply walks to go wait in her room for her fate.
Nick comes to Offred and tells her to go with the Eyes because they are part of the resistance “Mayday,” and he tells her to “trust him.” The Eyes claim that they are taking her because of “violation of state’s secrets.” I believe that Offred did escape because I think Nick was part of both the Eyes and Mayday and that he developed feelings for Offred so he wanted her to be safe. Her recordings being found in a former safe house infers that she did manage to escape to the Underground Femaleroad and most likely made it out of Gilead.
Historical Notes
There is no definitive time period that the author states Offred’s tale ends, but many believe that it occurred around 2005 based on evidence throughout the novel suggesting that Gilead is only a couple decades past the eighties, and the symposium occurs on June 25, 2195; based on these facts approximately 190-200 years have passed but the reader cannot be completely sure of this.
The keynote speaker Professor James Darcy Pieixoto; he is qualified because he is the director of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Archives at Cambridge University and he has published “Sumptuary Laws Through the Ages: An Analysis of Documents” and “Iran and Gilead: Two Late-Twentieth Century Monotheocracies, as Seen Through Diaries,” but, most importantly, he is the co-editor of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Offred told her story through 30 audio tape recordings. I believe this is indeed a plausible explanation because the details from their set up match to how and why she would need to hide the true intention of the tapes. It would also explain why Offred describes many of her retellings as a mere “reconstruction.”
The professor reveals that Offred made it to a safe house, that she recorded roughly thirty audio recordings, that she was part of the first wave of handmaids,
The committee concludes that the Commander was Frederick R. Waterford. He was accused of “liberal tendencies” and possessing a large amount of unauthorized pictures and literature that was unorthodox. He was also accused of harboring a rebellion member, and because of all these actions he met his end!
Offred’s ultimate fate is something nobody can be completely sure of, however there are multiple explanations of what could have happened to her. The first possibility is that Offred travelled through the Underground Femaleroad, was smuggled into Canada, and then finally escaped to England where it was the safest place for her. Another possibility is that Offred was recaptured during her attempted escape and was either killed, jailed, sent to the Colonies, became a prostitute, or was forced to return to her position as a handmaid. There are also multiple possible explanations for Nick’s motivation in helping Offred. One of which is that he feared for his own safety; if Offred was taken in and questioned (tortured), she would almost definitely reveal her sexual relationship with Nick and he would be severely punished, so he called in for help to avoid this. Another possibility is that because Offred could have very likely be pregnant by him and he very much wanted to have the status as a father- even though nobody could know- so he wanted to save Offred. A possibility that is not discussed in the lecture is that through their relationship Nick might have developed feelings for Offred and even started to love her so he didn’t want her to be captured by Gilead.
The explanation of what happened to Offred that seems most likely to me is that Offred managed to partially escape through the Underground Femaleroad but was recaptured. This is the possibility that seems most plausible to me because of Gilead’s awareness of Mayday and the Underground Femaleroad’s existence so they have extremely strong border control. It is most likely that as time went on, the border control only grew stronger and there were less places that one would be able to escape undetected, so if someone as resilient as Moira wasn’t able to get past the border in the past, later on with the extremely policed borders there is almost no chance that Offred would be able to get through the border. This explanation can be supported by the tapes having been left abandoned and also the fact that Offred never truly released her story to the public as one would probably do if they managed to escape Gilead’s grasp.