This extract clearly depicts Offred’s ambivalence towards love through the use of tone, imagery and diction. Her constant change in tone illustrates her instability that has gradually built up because of her status as a Handmaid. Atwood uses imagery and diction to support these changes in tone as well as emphasize Offred’s position in this matter.
Tone is a key device that highlights Offred’s emotion towards the situation. Her constant change in tone confirms her volatility towards love because of her status as a Handmaid. This extract begins in a stubborn tone and contains a dry wit to it: “Far lot of good it did to her.” Offred’s character has clearly developed to one with no emotion to one full of anger. This is because the only thing that makes her a woman and makes her important to the world has been taken away from her. In addition, she repeats the word “don’t” in short sentences: “I don’t want to be telling this story. I don’t have to tell it. I don’t have to tell anything, to myself or to anyone else.” Atwood uses short, snappy sentences to have an impact towards the reader and the repetition of these negative words add to that. Offred repeats these words because as a Handmaid she has lost all her importance and freedom and here she demonstrates her will to fight back.
Her tone then changes to longing and remembrance. This is incorporated with the device imagery. She describes love in a sense of realism that the reader immediately knows that she has been in love before: “We were falling woman. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying…” The image created in a reader’s mind is of one jumping off a cliff, her hair swooshing past her, and he eyes gleaming with anticipation as she rushes towards the bottom.
Offred’s tone then becomes desperation: “The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total.” With the repetition of “more”, the reader already knows that she is not satisfied with her life and she wants more out of it! She wants more out of love! These long sentences used with the repetition of words allow the reader to absorb the message that Offred is trying to get across.
Later on, Offred portrays her morose experience with love: “…you’d wake up in the middle of the night, when the moonlight was coming through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime and you’d think, Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men?” There are three devices utilized in this sentence; imagery, sentence structure, and rhetorical question. The imagery created is powerful and effective and one can imagine a crazy woman crawling to the side of her man’s bed and watching him closely. If you compare this type of imagery to the one earlier mentioned about how love is like jumping off a cliff, that one portrays the happy part of love, and this portrays the consequence to love. The long sentence structure drags makes the reader tenser as the sentence drags on to the end. With imagery, this is extremely effective! Her rhetorical question at the end demonstrates what love drives you to: fear. The rhetorical question is the most powerful element in my opinion to connect to the reader because it is as if Offred is asking the reader this question. It really gets the reader to think about the situation and what she would do in Offred’s position.
Overall, this extract made efficient use of sentence structure, imagery and tone to eloquently describe Offred’s emotions as a Handmaid and how it impacted love.
Monique, remember to provide context to the extract and discuss why your examples are important-the image of the falling woman, for example. What is significant about this?
ReplyDeleteMonique,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your commentary and I found your analysis of these quotes to be quite comical :)
I like how your commentary was organized according to the excerpt itself, in chronological order, because it really demonstrates the progression of Offred's feelings toward love throughout the passage.
You mention how Atwood uses rhetorical questions at the end of the passage, and "The rhetorical question is the most powerful element in my opinion to connect to the reader because it is as if Offred is asking the reader this question."
I also felt that Offred uses rhetorical questions as a means to get through to her readers.
I noticed that when Offred was speaking about love, she would always talk in the second person. Instead of talking about personal experiences she would say "You would look at the man...You would be filled with a sense of wonder".
I feel this corresponds to the idea of the use of rhetorical questions, because although it seems like Offred is talking about her own personal experiences, she refers to them indirectly, through the use of rhetorical questions and talking in the second person.
I would love to hear your opinion on this!
Hi Pooja,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed reading my commentary:)
I never quite looked at it that way but yes I do agree! Speaking in second person makes the reader more connected with the subject she is discussing. When I read the statement you mentioned "You would look at the man... You would be filled with a sense of wonder." I actually put myself in her shoes. This effect is amazing.