Over the "Wall"
The Night We Met, Lord Huron—
Link: https://youtu.be/KtlgYxa6BMU?si=BP2EAo43qJzbi13Y
Lord Huron’s song The Night We Met is about being haunted by the memories of a lost love and yearning to return to the moment (“the night”) before everything fell apart. Similarly, Offred is also haunted by her life before the regime, specifically the whereabouts and wellbeing of Luke and her daughter. The song lyric “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you” mirrors Offred’s situation: “I pray that the hole [through Luke] or two or three, there was more than one shot, that they were close together, I pray that at least one hole is neatly…” (104). As mentioned during class discussions, all the possibilities about Luke seem to be making her paranoid, and thus, tormenting her. Rather than simply wondering about where Luke is, she wonders about the characteristics of his supposed death. This moment represents both grief and the way this world turns memories into torture: every mention of Luke is paired with longing or hypothetical harm, not fond memories. She no longer remembers Luke as a person vividly, but rather his potential death is grotesque in detail. While her memory of Luke can also be interpreted as hope, the absence of the love she felt with Luke also seems to be affecting her mental state. The song’s slow tempo and instrumentals creates nostalgia, which is a representation of her endless thoughts that don’t appear to have a resolution. Just as how in the song the singer is stuck and haunted by their memories, Offred is a character who is shackled by her memories.
Meditation, Walter Wanderlay—
Link: https://youtu.be/um1F_afN3lQ?si=o_T8aGpcxDO_jfjk
This song is one that is commonly known as “elevator music” or is associated with waiting. In other words, the mundane. While there is an upbeat in the music, there is no variation in the volume (crescendos/diminuendos) or the tempo (ritardando), making it feel like the song is being blurred together. This is parallel to the current world of Gilead. Even though there is newfound “safety and protection” for the women, they lack freedom to express themselves: “I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned myself. I think about having such control. Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us…In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from” (24). This “freedom from” is flat and stripped of variation; women are told they are safer, but they no longer have the freedom to choose how to live. There is also lots of free time in this world for the Handmaids: “There’s time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn’t prepared for — the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound” (69). Because the Handsmaids’ only purpose in this world is to give birth to children, the rest of their time is spent in idleness. They are in an endless state of purgatory, just as when one is waiting for the elevator to reach their designated floor.
Stitches, Shawn Mendes—
Link: https://youtu.be/UYCg6NBiXMI?si=wFXvkIpfxu8lxPu0
“Now I need someone to breathe me back to life.” This song is about a longing for connection after the breakup of an abusive relationship. While that is different from Offred’s situation, as she did not literally break up with Luke, she was separated from him. She longs for a connection and this is apparent in her secret interaction with Nick in the kitchen: “It’s so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy. Luke, you’d know, you’d understand. It’s you here, in another body” (99). The natural psychological response when humans lose something is to replace it because we hate change or disruptions in normalcy. Offred’s character is a reflection of this psychological phenomenon: in her mind, Nick is the replacement for Luke. She is devoid of the love she felt and received from Luke, prompting her to almost make risky decisions to replace what she once had. The contrast between the upbeat tempo and the song’s content also mirrors how this longing caused thoughts of rebellion and survival to blur for Offred as she almost agreed to give in to Nick.
Live to Tell, Madonna—
Link: https://youtu.be/lWA2Lt4Se40?si=kIWkyd7ok6jRLrVr
This song is about the weight of secrets and the difference between knowing and not knowing: “Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned till then it will burn inside of me.” This is illustrated in Offred’s interactions with the Commander: “We open his study door, just a crack, and listen for noises in the hall. This is like being on a date. This is like sneaking into the dorm after hours. This is conspiracy” (139). The two are unable to be seen by Serena Joy, but also the others in the house. There is this air of secrecy akin with the lyrics of Live to Tell. Offred also has no autonomy over whether or not these “secret things” happen to her: they dictate her survival. On one hand, not obeying the Commander, the person with the most power, could end up in her punishment. But on the other hand, if she gets caught keeping this secret, she could also get into more trouble, as there are still the unknown spies in the story.
Welcome to the Machine, Pink Floyd—
Link: https://youtu.be/HzhyLxkbKdc?si=0HXxkwYRSQPp-PGA
This song criticizes the music industry and how it’s linked to a powerful, manipulative, and unjust system. In other words, it’s about highlighting how artists are treated no more than cogs in a machine, similar to how the Handsmaids are treated in The Handmaid’s Tale. In Gilead, women are no more than mere tools to make babies. If they were to have complications during birth, it would not matter as long as the baby was delivered. This is evident in the fact that there are no doctors present during birth and how they lack ultrasound technology because they do not care about the baby or the mother’s condition. This is seen in the case of Janine: “She’ll be allowed to nurse the baby, for a few months, they believe in mother’s milk. After that she’ll be transformed, to see if she can do it again, with someone else who needs a turn” (127). Even after a successful birth, there are already plans of sending her to a different home to repeat this seemingly endless cycle. She is also unable to stay with her child except for a few months. There is no consideration of the emotions of these women; they are “wombs with two legs” and nothing more than that.
