The Polaroid - Close Reading

In Chapter 35 Offred receives a gift from the commander’s wife that she has been waiting for since the day she got assigned to live with Serena Joy and the Commander. Even though she only had a minute with that special gift, at the end it didn’t feel like a gift anymore; it felt like a punishment, like she was pulled even deeper into her new life as a handmaid. Serena Joy gave Offred a polaroid of her daughter. “I take it from her, turn it around so I can see it right-side up. Is this her, is this what she’s like? My Treasure. So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion. Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there. But she exists, in her white dress. She grows and lives. Isn’t that a good thing? A blessing? Still, I can’t bear it, to have been erased like that. Better she’d brought me nothing.” Knowing that her daughter, her treasure, is healthy, beautiful, alive and hopefully happy made all of those years of Offred’s suffering worth it. Every mother wants their child to be alive and safe, have them with them at all times, be able to see them everyday and give them a hug. A mother loves their child no matter what their relationship is like, no matter what they went though, and no matter where they are. Having the feeling of knowing that you have someone, and they have you but not being able to say it or show it is one of the harder things anyone could go through, especially a mother that has been there for you since the first day you met. Offred seeing her daughter without her mom in that picture made her feel like it’s her fault, feeling like she’s dead to her, and even maybe out of her memories. This made me think of the time in the book where all the handmaids had to go through “Testifying” where they tell their personal stories about being raped, getting abortions, being catcalled, and then being forced to belive that its their fault, and they deserved it. Offred already has that empty feeling inside her, sitting in her room all by herself, or being used by the commander; receiving that polaroid from Serena Joy did not help with that feeling, deep inside it made Offred feel even worse, an even more disappointment than she already believes she is. Is it better to just live in the present? Leave the past behind and hope that the good things from it come back to the future? I feel like seeing her daughter will make her days in the Gilead go by even slower than they already have been. I really believe that it would have been better for Offred to never see that polaroid, but just keep on hoping and dreaming that her daughter is out there somewhere, happy and alive.