Playlist (feel free to listen to the songs as you read):

DAYLIGHT - DAVID KUSHNER

GOOD GRIEF - BASTILLE

YOUR’RE SOMEBODY ELSE - FLORA CASH

WHO I AM - THE SCORE

HARD SOMETIMES - RUEL

Six Feet Under- Billie Eilish

Six Feet Under by Billie Eilish, a haunting song about love and loss, resonates deeply with the themes in The Handmaid’s Tale. The song’s melancholic tone and lyrics reflect the underlying despair and longing that permeate the life of Offred. In this society where women are stripped of autonomy and identity, Offred, like the persona in “Six Feet Under,” experiences a symbolic death - the loss of her past life, name, and family.

The line “Our love is six feet under” particularly echoes Offred’s silent mourning for her illicit relationship with Nick and the burning memories of her husband, from whom she’s been forcibly separated. Both the song and the book explore themes of love’s remnants in the face of oppressive forces, the burial of the characters’ former selves, and their struggle to maintain hope and identity when everything has been taken away. Through this lens, “Six Feet Under” encapsulates the emotional landscape of The Handmaid’s Tale.

You’re somebody else - Flora Cash

You’re Somebody Else by Flora Cash mirrors the internal conflict Offred experiences in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The song’s chorus, “You look like yourself, but you’re somebody else,” reflects the cognitive dissonance Offred undergoes, forced into the role of a Handmaid while remnants of her former self linger. She navigates this by dissociating from her current reality, a psychological defense mechanism poignantly captured as she states, “I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed” (116).

Offred’s dissociation is further evidenced when she forgets portions of her past, her identity blurred and eroded by Gilead’s oppressions. She admits, “I can’t remember what my real name is” (84), signifying her loss of self, similar to the song’s narrative of not recognizing someone once cherished. The line “Well you talk like yourself. No, I hear someone else” from the song echoes Offred’s struggle to connect with who she was before Gilead, her past self becoming a stranger. Both the novel and the song artfully express the haunting journey through loss, adaptation, and the human spirit’s resilience amidst the erasure of identity.

Atlantis- Seafret

The song Atlantis by Seafret captures the profound sense of loss and helplessness. Atlantis parallels the despair in The Handmaid’s Tale, its lyrics about a distant utopia reflecting Offred’s sense of helplessness and her shattered reality in Gilead. Her feeling of confinement is vividly captured, mirroring the song’s narrative of an unreachable haven.

Offred’s overwhelming sadness and sense of loss resonate with the song’s chorus, “I want you to know that I can’t let you go.” She clings to her past yet feels powerless, a sentiment echoed in her poignant realization: “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print” (20). Both the song and the novel encapsulate a longing for what once was, underscoring a shared theme of enduring spirit amidst loss and captivity.

Homesick- Boywithuke

Homesick by Boywithuke resonates with the profound longing and sense of loss that Offred experiences in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The song’s essence of yearning for something unattainable deeply reflects Offred’s internal landscape as she aches for her child and the life she was forcibly untethered from. This intense longing is palpable when Offred painfully reflects, “I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable” (127).

Her memories are faint, almost out of reach, yet charged with emotions she cannot suppress. “The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I lie still,” (52), Offred muses, indicating her silent calls and yearnings for a savior, for a return to her past life — calls that she knows, heartbreakingly, will go unanswered.

The idea of missing something you can’t have in the song mirrors Offred’s helplessness and desire for her previous freedoms, a life that’s now a mere shadow. Her situation in Gilead is a constant reminder of those unreachable memories, making the song’s theme of homesickness an apt metaphor for her emotional exile.

Take me to Church- Hozier

Take Me to Church by Hozier connects deeply with The Handmaid’s Tale, both critiquing institutionalized religion’s corruption. The lyrics “We were born sick, heard them say it” reflect Gilead’s doctrine, where women are inherently flawed and need strict governance. This ideology is evident when the Aunts indoctrinate handmaids: “We learned to whisper almost without sound…We learned to lip-read…our heads flat on the desks, our hands at the sides of our faces to shield our words from the other girls…Aunt Lydia said.” (154).

Similarly, “I’ll tell you my sins, and you can sharpen your knife” from the song captures Gilead’s brutal retribution system, paralleling the fear Offred feels: “I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.” (63), underscoring the oppression she endures due to the twisted religious dictates.

The song and the book both serve as stark reminders of the dangerous trajectory when religion is corrupted for power, highlighting the perilous outcomes of blind faith and authoritarian control in society, hinting that such influence rarely, if ever, leads to a just end.

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood all of the handmaids are basically prisoners. The only thing that people can’t stop them from doing is remembering their old life, and imagining who they would have been if they weren’t handmaids. “The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. The night is my time out. Where should I go?…I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling… if it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.” The main character Offred talks about what she did when she was younger with her mom, and remembers the old times with her best friend Moira. Those parts make me think of myself, when I sit at school during lunch or lay in bed trying to fall asleep. I think about my home, Poland. I like to go back to Poland in my head, I like to keep the memories just how they are, remember all the vacations with my parents, my childhood friends and all the things we would do at the park and in our little town. However, at the end, a lot of the times I end the story a different way than it actually happened, so that I feel better about moving here. I just tell myself a story about how coming here was better for me. Tell myself that if I was in Poland I wouldn’t have met all my friends, played sports, and had all the opportunities that I have here. Sometimes deep down I hope I would have hated it more in Poland than I do here, even though deeper down I know I would be happy there. Offred talks about her memories more than actually thinking about how her life would be right now, if everything was still normal; but I still feel like I have a personal connection to Offred, when she mentions having her free time. This connects to when Offred would watch television in the morning, and if there was nothing to watch she would put on “Growing Souls Gospel Hour ” where they told Bible stories for children and sang hymns. “The first time was on television, when I was eight or nine… one of the women was called Serena Joy. She was the lead soprano…the woman sitting in front of me was Serena joy. Or had been, once.” When she was 8, Offred used to watch Serena on television, 25 years later she’s her handmaid; this represents how we never know what will happen next, everything can change overnight; the only thing that will never really change is our ability to make stories, and remember everything that has happened to us before. Serena used to be this big, famous, person, but now she’s a nobody; her life changed out of nowhere, and now she’s doing the same thing to Offred. I used to watch American movies with my parents. I would dream about going to an American high school with a football field and going to games with my friends… but now that I’m actually here, it’s nothing like the movies I watched. “ 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. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.” This part from Chapter 18 I feel summarizes Offred’s true feelings. She needs to have hope; hope that everything will end soon, she gets to see Luke again and her daughter. She hopes to get to live with them again, cross the border successfully and never have to worry about being taken away from them, and being killed for something that people shouldn’t have to worry about getting killed over. She hopes that she can go outside anytime she wants, go to the store and talk to people, find Moira and tell her everything that has happened to her. She hopes for her “old life” back. The Handmaid’s Tale is a representation of the word hope, and shows the reader that anything can change in life, but the past is never gone, and imagination can make or break a person.

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, explores oppression, control, and the struggle for freedom in a society.

There is a specific connection between the novel and the conflict between Israel and Palestine, focusing on the treatment of women and the use of religion for oppression. Both Gilead and the Israeli government are seen as forces, exerting control over the lives of their populations. In Gilead, women are stripped of their rights and treated poorly, while in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians and Israelis are subjected to crimes against humanity.

In Chapter 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred and Ofglen are standing by the Wall, looking at the bodies of people whom Gilead has hung. At the end of the chapter, Aunt Lydia tells Offred that what may seem extraordinary now will eventually become ordinary. This highlights the theme of the ability of individuals to adjust to their circumstances, no matter how oppressive or unjust they may be.

Another significant quote from the novel is, “Better never means better for everyone…It always means worse, for some”. This quote emphasizes the inequality and injustice in Gilead’s society, where the privileges and benefits enjoyed by some come at the expense of others.

The Handmaid’s Tale also explores the concept of identity and the ways in which it can be manipulated and controlled. Offred reflects on the loss of her name, which has been replaced by her assigned role as a Handmaid. She realizes that her name holds more meaning than a simple telephone number, and its absence represents a loss of her individuality. The novel also goes into the theme of freedom, with Aunt Lydia stating, “There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it”. This quote highlights the oppressive nature of Gilead’s regime, where individuals are stripped of their personal freedoms in the name of societal order and control.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the regime of Gilead uses religion to justify its oppressive policies and control over women’s bodies. Similarly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deep religious roots, with both sides claiming historical and religious connections to their origin. This use of religion to justify violence and oppression is common in both narratives, highlighting the dangers of religious extremism.

Despite the situations, both the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale and the people living in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict find ways to resist and maintain hope. In Gilead, Offred’s secret acts of rebellion and her determination to survive serve as a symbol of resistance. Similarly the people of Israel and Palestine, through movements, international solidarity, and the pursuit of peace, demonstrate their resilience and desire for a better future.

The Handmaid’s Tale offers an exploration of power, oppression, and the struggle for freedom. By connecting the novel to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of these issues and the importance of empathy, understanding, and the fight for justice in our own world.

The painting depicts a woman who had just given birth to an egg, a baby. Her gown and expressions beneath represent her upholding and giving her baby away, fulfilling her purpose with the egg. She is unfounded, unplaced, and no longer depressed. By the purpose of the egg’s aura, numerous shrouds of color engulf the mother in a spiral of mind-warping, a mind control. Her mind is no longer as it had warped before creating that egg. Her eyes revolve as the yellow spirals take possession of her pupils, relinquishing her of all pain and observations. She’s become a used puppet.

I used an egg as a personification of mind-warping to comprehend the control of its glory within The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred explains a routine of cooking and respecting eggs. Later perceiving: “I think that this is what God must look like an egg. The moon’s life may not be on the surface, but inside. The egg is glowing now as if it had an energy of its own. To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure.”(C.19) She describes her egg as God. Not only can it be mesmerized for its glory, but it’s also praised, worshiped even — the perplexion of a genuine shift of beliefs. It can almost even be a forced shift of beliefs. She also persuades — “Women used to carry such eggs between their breasts, to incubate them. That would have felt good—the minimalist life. Pleasure is an egg. Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one hand. But possibly this is how I am expected to react. If I have an egg, what more can I want?” (19) This deludes as an emotional source to that of the egg’s power. The egg cannot be profound any less from Offred as joy, her everything poured into that one egg. I used that perplexion in my drawing to represent a spiral of yellow in her eyes – obscure blindness to everything else around them except that egg, their child, their savior. Of minimal test, I used that egg to describe her warmth in that drawing. In that painting, trapped around multiple colors–layers of government and unholy controls that have mentally destroyed her will to fight; the woman uses the egg as warmth even in her final sanity.

While that egg can be profound by its omnipotence, its effects cannot last long. The woman holding the egg while bleeding will soon have to let go of it, not knowing why as she can’t comprehend what is happening around her except that egg. Offred then envokes: ” If I have an egg, what more can I want? In reduced circumstances, the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects. I would like a pet: a bird, say, or a cat. A familiar. Anything at all familiar. A rat would do, in a pinch, but there’s no chance of that. This house is too clean. I slice the top off the egg with the spoon, and eat the contents.” (19) Empowering the means of shares.

I used Offred’s quote of action against the woman’s uncontested ownership: the egg will not sooner belong to her. Unwavering confusion, anger, sadness, pain: nerves she can’t feel as she stands forward with the egg. Slowly, the egg could be eaten or forgotten by its fruition. As the egg and even the women, they’ve fulfilled their “purpose”.

Here we can see the two stalls that Offred and Moira would hide in at a specific time so they could talk for a few minutes. This part of the book shows the lengths they must go to for basic interactions. Interactions that we take for granted every day. You can see the damp floors as the building is fairly run down and poorly cared for. This reflects the dystopian world that they live in where every aspect of their lives is a battle they are desperately trying to win. Covered up by cheap paint that has already begun to peel, the stalls have emerging graffiti that predates their arrival in the gymnasium. The singular window rests high up in the corner of the bathroom, bared off like one you would find in a prison, emphasizing the similarity between their situation and that of a prisoner. The bathroom is dimly lit by one small light hanging from the center of the ceiling. The yellow stained urinals not only show the lack of care shown to the restrooms but also the desperation of the situation they’re in. They have so many women in the gymnasium that they have to resort to using both restrooms. Offred and Moira condemn themselves to these rundown bathrooms for the sole goal of having a conversation. They bring their faces close to a hole in the cracking wooden stalls so they can hear each other’s whispers. Speaking softly so that no guard or aunt can hear their prohibited conversation.

A singular light hangs from the ceiling, trying desperately to light up the room while simultaneously symbolizing their conversation. Their life in the gymnasium is inhuman, the darkness in the restroom. Their simple exchange of words is the light they’re holding on to, trying to overpower the darkness that surrounds them. Speaking to each other for a few brief moments is all they have to look forward to. The only aspect of their lives they still have some control over. Every other human interaction is restricted and overseen by the aunts. Guards who strictly enforce the new rules law, which are vastly different from the lives they used to live. Lives that the handmaids are encouraged to forget. 

However, one’s past can never truly be forgotten. The blue paint that covers the previously graffitied stalls is already starting to peel. Revealing the neon pink art that was once the face of the stalls. No matter how hard the paint tries to cover up the graffiti, it will always be there and it will eventually reemerge. Like the laws that predate Giliad, they have not been forgotten. While the new ways of life have covered them up, they will reappear. To Offred her graffiti is Luke, who she believes will find his way back to her no matter the challenges he faces. The run down stalls show that the old ways of life can weather the storm and return despite a few cracks. No matter how strict Giliad is now, people will find their way back to the graffiti. 

Dinajda Dollani

Ms. Pahomov

College English

October 13, 2023

The unspoken rules between women are a concept often seen in The Handmaid’s Tale, but also in our current society. Offred remembered “the rules, rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew: Don’t open the door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don’t stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don’t turn to look. Don’t go into a laundromat, by yourself, at night.”(24) In our society, women are always wary of men; carefully choosing what they wear, being aware of their surroundings constantly, and watching the way they stand or look at someone. It’s a well-known rule that women shouldn’t be out at night and always have to be accompanied by someone to go anywhere. All these rules amount to the same concept; don’t stand out and blend in with the world as if you’re just air itself. These rules are widely known but no one ever says them out loud because they are considered common sense. They are rules that are learned by women when they’re young. Many grow up being aware of their surroundings and careful of the people around them. Often women listen and watch all around them, taking in stories and experiences, and using them to establish the rules. It’s like finding pieces of a puzzle. All women share these rules, and though they are never spoken, they are all agreed upon. These unspoken rules are created in each woman’s mind in order to keep them safe. These rules are a tactic of survival, deployed by women in their daily lives to stay safe.

The Aunts in The Handmaid’s Tale use these prior worries over safety as a way to brainwash women to follow this new society. The safety concern was one way the Aunts convinced women that they should be happy with their new life in Gilead. In a way, many of those unspoken rules don’t apply anymore because of the new world. Although, this does not mean women are in a position where they don’t still need unspoken rules. In the book, it’s stated, “‘No,’ the woman says. I don’t know this woman, she wasn’t at the Center with me, though I’ve seen her, shopping. ‘But I’ll watch out for you.’ “(124) Even though the Handmaids don’t know each other, they know to quietly ask for information and keep in mind what the others wanted to know in case they can help. The Handmaids are united through common interactions and knowledge. The new situation they’re living through requires women to create new unspoken rules. This helps them survive once again, though the danger is now less physical and more mental. They use these new rules to be able to get through these new circumstances, relying on each other as much as before.

The Handmaids are able to communicate with each other and reveal their true intentions which others would not be able to grasp quite as easily. “‘I’d like to pass by the church,’ says Ofglen, as if piously. ‘All right,’ I say, though I know as well as she does what she’s really after.”(30) The Handmaids have to complete their duties in pairs so they can tell on the other if they try to rebel in any way. Offred knows that Ofglen does not actually care about the church, meaning she could easily say something to get her in trouble but she doesn’t. Instead, she acts like she’s unaware of her intention and goes along with her, giving Ofglen a chance to do something she wants. Offred understands Ofglen and decides to help her. This is another unspoken rule among women; being able to talk to each other without talking. Women decide to go out of their way to help each other, supporting one another silently, though the support is always recognized by the other. Women do this because they understand each other on a level that others can’t. “She hesitates, as if to say something more, but then she turns away and walks down the street. I watch her, She’s like my own reflection, in a mirror from which I am moving away.”(45) Offred recognizes Ofglen as a reflection of herself, seeing how similar they are even without much knowledge on each other. Many women see each other in this way. To help out another woman is to help out yourself. You understand them how you wish you were understood. You support them silently, just like you wish to be supported silently. We make these rules and we don’t speak them, for they can be understood without words.