I chose to paint the scene from page 39 of The Handmaid’s Tale, after Offred’s daughter has been taken from her and she is presented with a photograph as proof of her child’s safety. The painting is of this photograph. The book states:

“They showed me a picture of her, standing outside on a lawn, her face a closed oval. Her light hair was pulled back tight behind her head. Holding her hand was a woman I didn’t know. She was only as tall as the woman’s elbow. You’ve killed her, I said. She looked like an angel, solemn, compact, made of air. She was wearing a dress I’d never seen, white and down to the ground” (39).

With the information given, I depicted Offred’s daughter standing beside a faceless woman. She is faceless because Offred does not care to know what her face looks like. She is only concerned about her daughter. The woman and the child are holding hands, as the book states, but they stand far apart. Between them is a gap wide enough for a third person. This is meant to represent the lack of emotional connection between the child and the person who is presumably her new caretaker. I find it unlikely that the people Gilead chose to care for the children are there to make them feel secure and loved. It’s more probable that they are only there to indoctrinate the kids and make sure that their worldview aligns with Gilead’s values. This matches Offred’s description of “solemn”. If the child actually felt at home, she would be more relaxed and carefree. Instead, Offred now sees a sort of seriousness in her young daughter.

In Offred’s view, her daughter is “like an angel”, so I painted her with a halo and wings. She also does not have a shadow on the ground, whereas the woman holding her hand does. This is because Offred says “you’ve killed her”, implying that the daughter she once knew is now deceased. Both the child and the woman are wearing shapeless, floor length gowns. This is in accordance with the ideals of Gilead, which deprives women of any sort of individuality in order to maintain the societal structure they have implemented. It makes sense that the children they abducted would be made to learn these values from a young age. That’s why I chose to paint the daughter wearing a shapeless, plain, high collar dress. It seems like something Gilead would make her wear.

Aside from the two figures in the painting, the background is dull and uninteresting. This is partly because Offred likely does not care much about the background, only briefly noting that the two people are “standing outside on a lawn”. Other than Offred’s perception of the photograph, the other reason I made the image so dull is because it reflects the lack of mental stimulation under Gilead’s control. Gilead wants the lower class, especially the women, to think as little as possible. Offred has mentioned throughout the book that she is bored. Therefore, it makes sense to reflect this in the painting. Because the child is a girl, I doubt Gilead is giving her anything to do that requires any critical thinking. She’s probably just being taught her future responsibilities as either a handmaid or a wife. The painting is purposefully dull as a reflection of the child’s future if Gilead continues to stand.

** note that though I tried to make the painting dull, the effect is not as pronounced as this picture would make it seem. The lighting was just bad.

Lit Log #1 - Close Reading - Confiscated Identity

I.

In chapter 6, on page 32 of The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator, Offred, describes a scene where there are six corpses being displayed on “the Wall”. It’s quite unsettling how casually she speaks of their deaths and the way in which she describes the corpses, especially their heads. Offred could even be considered unfazed by a sight which would leave the average person fearful, shocked, and appalled. Her thoughts immediately travel beyond the expected fearfulness to analyze the purpose of these corpses and their presentations.

“Though if you look and look, as we are doing, you can see the outlines of the features under the white cloth, like gray shadows” (32).

Her lack of reaction makes the scene more scary than if she had screamed and ran because it shows the reader that this is a normal occurrence in Gilead.

II.

Not only are Offred’s feelings toward the scene strange, but her descriptions of it even more so. It was interesting that she describes the obfuscation of the corpses’ faces in multiple different ways, as if to place emphasis on their anonymity.

She describes them as “dolls on which the faces have not yet been painted”, “as if their heads are sacks, stuffed with some undifferentiated material, like flour or dough”, “the heads are zeros”, “are the heads of snowmen…The heads are melting” (32).

Through these descriptors, Offred repeatedly highlights the unimportance of these heads and the people they belong to. Dolls, which are left to the control of others; flour and dough, powdery and easily spilled; zeros, nothingness and lack of value; and snowmen, temporary.

III.

A similar scene is presented at the start of chapter 8, on page 43: “There are three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock…The two others have purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms” (43).

Through these two scenes, it’s clear that the government uses this wall as a way to set an example for anyone who may harbor any ideas that don’t go along with Gilead’s expectations. Offred herself admits that “they [the bodies] are meant to scare” (32). It’s important that Offred also notes the outfits worn by each of the corpses. The six corpses on page 32 wear white coats, each with “a placard hung around his neck to show why he has been executed: a drawing of a human fetus” (32). The three mentioned on page 43 wear a black cassock and Guardian uniforms. This shows that the bodies are stripped of their identities and reduced only to their societal role. It shows that Gilead as a whole does not value anyone, even those that might have been considered on their own side. The doctors, because they had performed abortions in the past and therefore did not fit the ideals of the regime. The priests, who, though are Christian, still are not spared. The Guardians, an important role in the enforcement of Gilead’s policies, executed for being gay.

These two scenes together symbolise the fear that everyone in Gilead lives under, whether that be Handmaids, Guardians, or even Commanders. It’s an attempt to make everyone afraid because anyone, regardless of position, can and will be subjected to the ire of the government.

“They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples, for the rest” (33).

IV.

The entirety of The Handmaid’s Tale is from the first-person perspective of Offred, and her nonchalance in this scene on page 32 shows just how quickly someone’s thinking can be altered. It’s clear throughout the story that Gilead is a fairly new government. Offred remembers various scenes from both her childhood and adulthood that occurred before the establishment of Gilead. That means comparatively, Gilead is only a small fraction of the life she has led thus far. Yet the perspective of the story allows us to see that even though Offred tries to keep her mind separate from her physical situation, Gilead’s ideology has managed to seep into her thoughts. She’s been robbed of the way she thinks.

When she suspects the Handmaid alongside her in this scene to be crying at the sight of the six corpses, she thinks, “In what way could it make her look good? I can’t afford to know” (33). Whereas we might find it normal or even expected that someone would cry or otherwise show distress at such a public display of violence, Offred’s first thought is that the other Handmaid’s tears are an act. To her, there’s no way that the other Handmaid could just genuinely feel sad over these deaths; she must have an ulterior motive. This is a result of Gilead influencing her thoughts. Even though Gilead has not existed for long, it has already drastically altered her way of life and penetrated the privacy of her own mind, which is perhaps more frightening than the actual policies they put in place because you might not even realize when you become one of them.

“This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary” (33).

V.

Throughout the text, there is a theme of the loss of identity. Identity is obviously an integral part of the human experience, and Offred is consistently denied an identity. All the Handmaids are. They are not allowed to keep the names that make them unique, but are instead subject to Gilead’s naming conventions. This motif is also present in the aforementioned scenes. All the corpses on the walls have obscured faces and therefore are deprived of their identities. This move is probably so that passerby can be sufficiently cowed by the scene while feeling minimal pity or attachment to the corpses that could lead to resentment of the government.

It’s much harder to establish a resistance if no one knows who anyone is.

Our map theme is Bikini Bottom from Spongebob Squarepants. Each individual quadrant is unique but contributes to the overall theme of the map.

click here to check it out!

My notebook, as it did last quarter, has helped me keep my class notes and thoughts organized in a place where they are easily accessible. However, there are still many ways in which it can be improved to maximize its potential. Moving forward, I hope to introduce more note taking styles into my notebook and explore a larger variety of visual tools.

My Q2 Notebook flip through Video

This quarter, I found myself continuously referring back to class notes, and my notebook was really helpful when I needed information from class. However, I think my notebook is kind of overwhelming because of all the different titles and headings, so moving forward, I plan to keep my note-taking style more consistent in terms of headings and subheadings.

click here to see my project

My benchmark is a multi-narrative story about two siblings who struggle to accept their stepmother after their father had promised not to remarry after their mother’s death. The story is inspired by Robin Benway’s novel, Far From the Tree, and the essential questions of this unit, what it means to be a family. the techniques that Benway uses and her interpretation of family are both big contributors to inspiration for my project.

This is Fiona Shi’s Me Magazine Project. I hope you enjoy it :)