Multiple Sides

It was late at night, maybe nine or ten o’clock, and I was sitting at my desk. I was a good student, doing my reading when chapter 16 came along. I remembered Ms. Giknis telling us that there were disturbing moments in the book, but I figured she just had to say that because there were small moments that could make people minorly uncomfortable. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The chapter starts off with an announcement of a ceremony “The Ceremony goes as usual.” and I didn’t think anything of it. I began to read further and it started to describe the scene of where everything was about to go down. I was confused, not really sure what to expect. Offred and Serena Joy were getting in position for something. I closed my eyes. I realized where I had gotten in the book, and though I like to consider myself mentally tough, reading about nonconsensual sex was a first, and hopefully the last. As they began to describe further details, I began feeling anxious. For some reason, it felt like the book had come to life and I was reading a description of someone I knew, someone real. I took a sip of water, and stared blankly at the book. I had always known rape was a real thing, it just had never hit me what it’s really like. I’ve always tried to not worry about that kind of stuff, having a gut feeling that it might change me reading some of this stuff, and it did. I continued reading again, prepared for what I was about to read, when things took another turn. Offred became vastly uncomfortable, as her description of the situation was anything but normal. “Serena Joy grips my hands as if it is she, not I, who’s being fucked — He is preoccupied, like a man humming to himself in the showing without knowing he’s humming” It brought out a different emotion in me, a sense of awkwardness that just made me more uncomfortable. It made me think about the way people treat women as a whole because the way I looked at it, I think the Commander would expect Offred to be uncomfortable because she’s been forced to have sex with him, but I don’t think he’d expect her to feel awkward. During the ceremony, Offred begins to question herself and the situation. “If he were better looking would I enjoy this more?” My discomfort was slowly dissipating, but I definitely still felt like I went through something, even though all I did was read a few pages. As it finishes, the discomfort spikes, but then it goes back to this grey area. He did what he did, and then just cleaned up and walked out. Serena treated Offred like a dog. “Get up and get out.” This didn’t follow procedure, as Offred is supposed to have time after it, but clearly the ceremony affected her. I realized there’s multiple perspectives to the ceremony. Offred, the one who is being forced into a situation all because of her ability to get pregnant, and Serena Joy, who didn’t ask for her position either. She basically has to help her husband cheat on her, creating a baby that isn’t hers but if Offred conceives one, she has to treat the baby like it is hers. The situation they are in is hurting multiple parties, which made it even harder to read the end of the chapter. I learned that even though any situation I’m in will never be like this, that there are multiple parties involved in things that may not seem they hurt many. I also learned that, though reading this chapter was difficult, I need to read things like it a lot more. It gave me a lot of insight as to what the reality is of terrible scenarios and I know people say “The truth can hurt”, but I think it will only make me more knowledgable.