Ages and Innocence

This drawing is a representation of a scene in “The Handmaid’s Tale” when the main character Offered is experiencing one of her memories while drifting away in her bed. She reminisces about the moments she would spend with her mom, specifically this moment illustrated is about a time when Offered and her mother were walking around in the park. She was handed a magazine with a naked woman on the cover. When she was young and innocent, she believed the naked woman was nothing, it was “Tarzan on the TV” but now as she reflects on her past experience, she now realizes that the woman hanging from the chains was more than a TV character.

Little Offred (pictured on the left) is casually reading the magazine she was just handed. She was positive about it, she thought it was a pretty woman swinging from vines. She had an innocent viewpoint on the image. Due to her being through all of the things she has been through in the last few years, such as creating life and participating in the acts to do so, older Offred (pictured on the right) no longer has an innocent viewpoint of the image. She now realizes that the image is sexual material, and is not meant for the eyes of children. Her first thought the moment she saw the image wasn’t to depict the nude woman, it was to use her imagination and creativity to envision something that she thought the image meant. Now that she has endless nights, lost in her thoughts, she now realizes the true meanings behind things.

“I looked at it with interest, it didn’t frighten me.”(38) Atwood added that quote to show to the readers that now, looking back if she had the knowledge that she has now, she would’ve questioned the image more and maybe been more frightened. She now realizes a naked woman hanging from a chain is not normal at all, and we realize through reading this book that nothing in the world of Gilead is normal.

Overall, I drew this image to depict the differences between younger Offred and current day Offred. It expresses the differences between how an innocent child might view something versus how a grown adult would view an image. This specific scene is so significant to the story’s structure because it helps the reader understand how different life experiences can impact your memories. There are many scenes in which Offred comes to realization with her past self, but this scene in particular not only represents Offred realizing her mistakes, but it is also a visualization of how innocence will start to go away as we age, and it will happen at an unpredictable moment. I drew the lively life of Little Offred, with color and vibrance to represent the child in her, but when drawing the older Offred that we all know so well, I drew the image with less innocence, less bright and cheerful colors overall to represent the depressing life that she is currently stuck in.