That is a reconstruction, too.
Its racist policies, for instance, were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period, and racist fears provided some of the emotional fuel that allowed the Gilead takeover to succeed as well as it did. Our.
I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped – for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.
If I’d been older I would’ve asked what it was right away, but I didn’t because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would know what it was. In stories I’d read, I’d come across the words nameless dread. They’d just been words then, but now that’s exactly what I felt.
She doesn’t have to stay locked into place, into this mournful, drawn-out, low-grade misery. She has all kinds of choices and possibilities, and the only thing that’s keeping her away from them is lack of willpower.
I’ve got nothing against telepathy, said Jane; but the telephone is so much more dependable.
I still have it in me to feel sorry for him. Moira is right, I am a wimp.
What’s the difference between vision and a vision? The former relates to something it’s assumed you’ve seen, the latter to something it’s assumed you haven’t. Language is not always dependable either.
There is a silence. But sometimes it’s as dangerous not to speak.
But also I’m hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it’s true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it’s because I’ve been emptied; or maybe it’s the body’s way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still. I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse.
He could never get used to her, she was fresh every time, she was a casketful of secrets.
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.
Saved by childbearing, I think. What did we suppose would save us, in the time before?
Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects.
It is better to journey than to arrive, as long as we journey in firm faith and for selfless ends.
In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things.
Hell we can make for ourselves.
The mind, he reflects, is like a house – thoughts which the owner no longer wishes to display, or those which arouse painful memories, are thrust out of sight, and consigned to attic or cellar; and in forgetting, as in the storage of broken furniture, there is surely an element of will at work.
It was the feet they’d do, for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After.
She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she had been expecting for some time and now she’d been proven right.