Reading how women in the Gilead lost their rights so quickly is really depressing. Their lives were going normally when mysterious people with machine guns stripped them of their rights. They can't use their money anymore and lost their jobs. It gets worse are worse until they are slaves, as they are in their present situation. This is kind of like the Holocaust when the Jews in Europe lost all their belongings when Hitler took over. The Jews went from being normal human beings to disposable human experiments. They, like the people in The Handmaid's Tale, lost everything they had, even their families.
When Offred and Ofglen were outside of Soul Scrolls, they saw each other's faces for the first time. Offred explains, "This is the first time I've ever seen Ofglen's eyes, directly, steadily, not aslant. There's a shock in this seeing; it's like seeing somebody naked, for the first time." How have they never seen each other's faces? They walk with each other around the town, and are pretty good friends. I don't see how it's such a big deal.
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I like the connection of what happened to the women in the story to the Jews during WWII. They both experienced similar events, being suddenly stripped of all their rights and property. What happened to the Jews was probably worse though- many were just killed for no reason (often in horrible deaths) and others had to suffer in concentration camps.
ReplyDeleteI think Offred and Ofglen has never looked directly at each other's faces because it seems like the people in this society aren't really allowed to look at each other. There was a part when Offred mentioned that the guards don't look at their faces and they don't look at theirs. Also handmaids were expected to walk with their backs slightly slouched and their heads down (eyes on the ground), plus they can't see anyone with those wings over their heads anyway.
I think that if they look at each other directly, and talk, people (the Eyes) will think they are up to something.