The Escape Artist

While reading The Handmaid’s Tale, Moira was one of the characters that stuck out to me due to her rebellious nature and antics. She reminded me of one of my older cousins who is and was one of the most rebellious people I know. He always did the opposite of whatever anyone told him and was overprotective of himself. To me, my cousin growing up was my idol. I looked up to him heavily as he was like an older brother to me. I watched him and almost studied him just trying to understand him and the way he moved, his outlook on the world.

Chapter 22 of the book describes Moira’s plans to escape and it reminded me of when my cousin and I had a conversation about how he wanted change for himself and wanted to leave Philadelphia. He was tired of the terrible feeling that was attached to him by being in Philly. He was filled with so much emotion and passion for his desire to leave as Moira seems to have had through Offred’s perspective. From Offred’s viewpoint, we see that Moira has a plan of escape by overflowing the toilet and killing Aunt Elizabeth, swapping clothes, and walking right out of the center. As stated in chapter 22 on pages 130-132 her plan to escape by overflowing the toilet and then bringing Aunt Elizabeth to “help” fix the toilet Moira stabs Aunt Elizabeth in the ribs then tells her “I’ll stick it all the way in, I know where, I’ll puncture your lung.” From my perspective, my cousin was killing his emotional ties to Philadelphia and taking this leap of faith of moving out of state and didn’t look back. For about a year we didn’t speak to each other as I reminded him of home. The idea of home was too painful for him as everything he knew and loved was Philadelphia. Philadelphia was his home but so much baggage came with it and he was tired of the pain and suffering that was tied to him living here.

As I see from my perspective after reading what Offred has expressed throughout what I have read about Moira, it seems as if Moira holds in a lot of pain and deals with her pain through humor. Growing up I noticed my cousin would joke a lot and tried to make everyone else laugh with him I was too young to understand, but as I got older I finally understood why he would do that. Even though as I got older he would tell me more about his life, his pain, his suffering I couldn’t understand why he did the stuff he did till I could understand his emotional state. I came to the realization when reading the story when Moira was talking about the idea of date rape and how she was quick to laugh as if off like it was just a regular joke to make from that point, after deliberating with my classmates I could conclude that it probably happened to Moira. From the connection, I could make between Moira and my cousin just like Offred, I noticed how rebellion has changed the course of life. My cousin’s rebellious behavior caused our relationship to get put on hold for some time as the time we spent together was limited my parents thought his behavior was going to rub off on me as I started to follow in his footsteps. My relationship with my parents changed because of the effects of my and my cousin’s relationship as they kept me away from the stuff he was doing. From secretly hanging out with him when my parents weren’t home to me meeting up with him out in the city. We built such a tight bond that when he left I changed and at a point, I was so shocked that it felt numb like it seemed like Offred feels at the beginning of the book. When we didn’t talk it felt like he almost didn’t exist because he didn’t talk to anyone so no one got an update on him. His leaving was tough but I know it was for the best just like it was for Moira. They both gained their idea of freedom, Moira’s escape from Gilead, and my cousin’s escape from what he saw as his hellscape. Offred and I could both see that escape can be the only way to find pure happiness and change but also can spark something inside someone else.