“Either he talks or I will. I know it, I can feel speech backing up inside me, it’s so long since I’ve really talked with anyone. The terse whispered exchange with Ofglen, on our walk today, hardly counts; but it was a tease, a preliminary. Having felt the relief of even that much speaking, I want more.”

This quote speaks to a specific feeling that is actually pretty universal and common, but is hardly ever put into words, it’s that feeling of going so long without speaking to someone that it feels like anything you have to say is just stuck inside of you. When Offred says “speech backing up inside me,” It precisely captures something many people experience, even though it’s a completely different situation. It’s not only that she wants to have a conversation but it’s that the words are building up pressure, like she will explode if she doesn’t let them out. This resonates with me because in our current society so many people go though their days have these surface level conversions that feel empty. They talk to coworkers, classmates, friends, family about these surface level things which is exactly what Offred means when she describes her exchange with Ofglen as something that “hardly counts.” People talk constantly but they’re not really truly talking to anyone a lot of the time.There’s a massive difference between common small talk, and deeper conversation, where you’re actually saying what you are thinking or feeling. Think about how many people right now sit in their school cafeteria, or their lunch break at work and talk about assignments or weekend plans but still feel lonely. You might not realize how surface level conversations can be until you have a real deeper conversation. This is what Offred means when she calls her short moment with Ofglen “a tease, a preliminary.” She gets this small moment of real connection and it reminds her of everything she had desperately been missing, which makes her want it more. “Having felt the relief of even that much speaking, I want more.” This line captures the reliability of someone remembering what a genuine connection feels like they can’t just forget ,they begin to long for more. What stands out the most to me about this passage is the way it displays that loneliness isn’t always about being physically alone. Offred is basically never physically alone, there are constantly people around her, but she feels entirely isolated because she has nobody to have these real conversations with. Everything she says and does needs to be controlled and monitored. This reminds me of the way people feel in the real world, many people are surrounded by people constantly, whether that’s at home or at schools, but still feel isolated. People constantly have thoughts and feelings that build up but they don’t know who or where to dump them, just like Offred describes. This passage makes me think about how real conversations aren’t just nice to have, but actually necessary for humans to survive. We need to be heard by others, to be understood. When Offred says “it’s so long since I’ve really talked with anyone” she’s describing something more than just being bored, she’s showing the ways she’s starving for something that is not food, she’s starving for connection. When you can understand what Offred is going through, you can see why she takes risks by having conversations with the commander, when someone is that desperate to be heard, they’re willing to take risks.

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?” # 51 This line from Offred reflecting on his life before, with Hannah and Luke is simple but impactful. This realization is specific to Offred’s situation, but there’s something familiar about it. It’s the way people often can only really see and recognize their happiness when it is no longer present and the way normal complaints can suddenly seem like a luxury when viewed from a worse perspective. Margot Atwood is able to capture a real human feeling and experience in the moment, the realization of missing something when it is gone and the clarity that comes after things have already changed. What hits so deeply about this specific quote is the way it feels so realistic. People tend to focus so much on the bad parts of life, like what’s going wrong or what’s annoying us, that we tend to forget about the good. Offred had Luke and Hannah, she had freedom and a normal life, but she probably spent so much time worrying about the common things like work, stress and money. Now she is trapped in this horrible society where she’s been stripped of all her freedoms, she can’t even use her real name, and then looking back, all her old problems seem ridiculously small. This connects directly to the real world, when we think about the way we tend to view society changing, we often will feel nostalgic towards the past and romanticize what we had, but in the moment our problems still felt massive. This makes me think about the way my parents will talk about this generation and the way things were so much simpler when they were growing up, without social media and all the new technology, but im sure back then they were probably stressed about other things and didn’t realize they were living in what they would now probably call “ the good old days.” It’s almost like Margot Atwood is showing us a common pattern that occurs throughout history through this quote. People during Nazi Germany or the great depression probably looked back at times when things were normal and think the same thoughts “We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?” Or even more current times like the corona virus, we suddenly started wishing we had been grateful for simple things like grocery shopping and going to school when suddenly we were stuck in our homes. There’s constantly moments where society changes and everyone realizes the things they lost that they took for granted. If we constantly look back on times we miss, it’s scary to realize that at some point we will probably be missing right now. We could look back on 2025 and think all the things we currently worry about are not even a big deal. This quote also makes connections to how we view and talk about America compared to other countries. We constantly fight and complain about politics, the economy and other social issues and even though these complaints are completely valid and worth fighting for, if we look at countries like Afghanistan where women can’t even go to school or places like north korea with insane dictatorship, we realize that with all of our problems, we still have these freedoms that millions of people would do anything for. I think that’s one of the reasons the handmaid’s tale is such a scary book. Margot Atwood isn’t writing about a different planet nothing like ours, she is showing a society that looks like ours but could turn into the horrors of the handmaid’s tale. The women in the book used to have freedoms like American women, who never realized that they would lose the most basic rights. This represents the ways that democracy and freedom can be changed. We learn and read about societies that collapsed or turned into dictatorships but it never seems realistic. Margot Atwood’s quote shows us that people living this probably felt the same, they were just normal women dealing with regular problems, when everything changed. This is why this quote is so impactful because it’s not just about Offred missing her old life but also telling of how quickly things can change.