he Weight of Remembering: Freedom, Memory, and Power in Chapter 23 of The Handmaid's Tale.
When I first read Chapter 23 of The Handmaid’s Tale, I didn’t expect such a quiet scene, just Offred and The Commander playing Scrabble, to affect everything so deeply. The more I thought about this chapter, the more unsettling it became. This chapter is not dramatic in the usual sense: no chases, no violence, no public Ceremony. But for me, it became one of the most emotionally charged moments in the book. Atwood uses small gestures and ordinary words to expose the terrifying connection between power and language. My emotional experience with this scene moved from curiosity, to discomfort and to an awareness of how fragile freedom really is, especially the freedom to remember who we are.
Offred’s narration begins with a quiet shock: “I want to laugh, shriek with laughter, fall off my chair” (Atwood Page 138). The Commander has just invited her to play Scrabble, an act that would seem harmless in any normal world. But in Gilead, words are contraband, and literacy for women is forbidden. What struck me here was how physical Offred’s reaction is. Her laughter isn’t joy. As a reader, I felt the tension between her desire to act freely and her fear of being punished for it. When she writes, “I can feel the laughter inside me, like a bubble,” I imagine the pressure she’s holding inside. My own reaction was confusion mixed with dread. Why is this simple act so dangerous? And yet, why does it feel almost sacred?
As the scene unfolds, Offred’s awareness of the past mixes with the awkwardness of the present. “Now of course it’s something he can use against me, later if he chooses”(Page 139). Here, I felt myself recoil. What seems like a human connection, a man offering a woman to play a game, is actually built on a threat. Offred knows every interaction can be used as leverage. I started to realize how Atwood blurs the line between affection and control, making it impossible to know whether intimacy in Gilead is ever real. My emotional response shifted from curiosity to unease. I wanted to trust the commander’s gesture, but Offred’s inner voice reminds me not to: “He looks like a midwestern bank manager, but he’s not.” That line, quiet as it is, made me pause. Offred’s ironic tone, the way she reduces him to a type, becomes her only form of resistance. It’s language used for survival
I also found myself haunted by how much memories show through this scene. As Offred recalls life “in the time before,” she says, “We used to exchange jokes, with the man in the bar, with strangers. We were a society dying of too much choice” (P 140). I remember rereading that line and feeling both fascinated and uncomfortable. “Too much choice”, it’s such a bitter paradox. Offred recognizes how the past had its own kind of emptiness, carelessness with freedom. When I first read it, I felt a sting of recognition. I thought about how we take our own choices for granted. Atwood doesn’t just criticize Gilead here, She criticizes and critiques complacency. This made me feel uneasy because it felt directed towards me living in a world that still struggles with power and control(mostly race).
The Scrabble game itself becomes a metaphor for rebellion through memory. Each word Offred spells “Valance,” “zygote” feels like an act of resistance(P 141). I love how Atwood chooses words that are reproductive and domestic, echoing the world Offred has been reduced to. I noticed how the language becomes: “The letters feel like dried out bones under my fingers”(P 142). That image stopped me. Bones and remains symbolize what’s left of the old world. I felt grief and admiration at the same time. Offred isn’t just touching wooden tiles; she’s touching a ghost of her past identity. For me, this is one of Atwood’s most powerful moments. A scene that turns something as mundane as a board game into a confrontation with history.
When the Commander tells her, “You can’t cheat fate,” and she replies, “Maybe you can,”(P 143) I felt a sense of triumph. It’s one of the only times in the novel where Offred pushes back. Yet it’s also heartbreaking that her rebellion takes place in whispers, in private, within the walls of a man’s study
By the end of the scene, I felt hollow. Offred’s final reflection, “I want to steal something… It would make me feel like I have power”(P 144) stayed with me. I understood that this wasn’t about scrabble or about the commander. It was about reclaiming the self in a world determined to erase it.
