10. Particicution & end

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Lesson objectives 

We consider the influencing context of 1984

We will consider authorial choices in chapters forty-three to forty-six

1984 - intertextuality

In Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government controls what the public think with a ceremony called the “Two Minutes Hate”.​

​In this, “Big Brother” (the totalitarian regime) rouses the emotion of the public into a frenzy and then "saves" the audience with the safety that regime offers the inhabitants. 

How could this link to The Particicution in Chapter 43?​

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How could the name “Big Brother” link to roles in The Handmaid’s Tale? What effect are they meant to have on the characters?​

Concepts we generated: 

Power dynamics, oppression, patriarchy, identity, rebellion 

Concepts HL literature 

Deuteronomy 22:23-29 (pg. 286)​

23-24 If a man is caught in town having sex with an engaged woman who isn’t screaming for help, they both must be put to death. The man is guilty of having sex with a married woman. And the woman is guilty because she didn’t call for help, even though she was inside a town and people were nearby. Take them both to the town gate and stone them to death. You must get rid of the evil they brought into your community.​

25 If an engaged woman is raped out in the country, only the man will be put to death. 

The Particicution chapter forty-three 

Particicution - is a portmanteau of the words 'participation' and 'execution'

From this chapter, find and analyse a quote that shows how Atwood presents:​

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Ofglen​

Janine​

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What are our opinions of these two characters? Has it changed since the start of the novel?

My hands smell of warm tar. I want to go back to the house and up to the bathroom and scrub and scrub, with the harsh soap and the pumice, to get every trace of this smell off my skin. The smell makes me feel sick.​

​     But also I’m hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it’s true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it’s because I’ve been emptied; or maybe it’s the body’s way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still.​

​     I want to go to bed, make love, right now.​

​     I think of the word relish.​ 

​     I could eat a horse.

Chapter forty-three pg 289

How  does Atwood use imagery and structure  to highlight Offred's reaction to the particicution?

Chapter forty-four The new Ofglen pgs 290 - 293

The New Ofglen: Blessed be the fruit​

Offred: May the Lord open​

The New Ofglen: You must be Offred​

Offred: Yes​

The New Ofglen: We've been sent good weather​

Offred: Which I receive with joy… Has Ofglen been transferred, so soon?​

The New Ofglen: I am Ofglen.​

Offred: We should go to the Wall.​

The New Ofglen: As you like… Let that be a reminder to us.​

Offred: Yes. I didn't know Ofglen very well. I mean the former one.​

The New Ofglen: Oh? ​

Offred: I've only known her since May. Around the first of May I think it was. What they used to call May Day.​

The New Ofglen: Did they? That isn't a term I remember. I'm surprised you do. You ought to make an effort… To clear your mind of such…echoes… Under His Eye.​

Offred: Under His Eye.​

The New Ofglen: She hanged herself. After the Salvaging. She saw the van coming for her. It was better.

In this dialogue what is unsaid becomes even more important than what is said.​

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In your groups, study the dialogue between Offred and the ‘new’ Ofglen. Pick 3 examples of where a piece of dialogue contains an unspoken, latent, unsaid meaning.​

Chapter forty-five pg. 294

Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you’ve let me off, I’ll obliterate myself, if that’s what you really want; I’ll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I’ll give up Nick, I’ll forget about the others, I’ll stop complaining. I’ll accept my lot. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent. I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.​

     I know this can’t be right but I think it anyway. Everything they taught at the Red Centre, everything I’ve resisted, comes flooding in. I don’t want pain. I don’t want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don’t want to be a doll hung up on the Wall, I don’t want to be a wingless angel. I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.​

​     I feel, for the first time, their true power.

What is to be inferred from this string of declaratives with the use of anaphora? What is the significance of each of the verbs here?

Why the metaphor of the chalice?

What does the figurative language refer to?

Who are the “they”, and why do you think this is the first time that Offred feels “their true power”?

Why “abject”?​

Definition - completely without pride or dignity; self-abasing.

Chapter forty-six pg. 299 - 300

There are a number of things I could do. I could set fire to the house, for instance. I could bundle up some of my clothes, and the sheets, and strike my one hidden match. If it didn’t catch, that would be that. But if it did, there would at least be an event, a signal of some kind to mark my exit. A few flames, easily put out. In the meantime I could let loose clouds of smoke and die by suffocation.​

​     I could tear my bedsheet into strips and twist it into a rope of sorts and tie one end to the leg of my bed and try to break the window. Which is shatterproof.​

​     I could go to the Commander, fall on the floor, my hair dishevelled, as they say, grab him around the knees, confess, weep, implore. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, I could say. Not a prayer. I visualize his shoes, black, well shined, impenetrable, keeping their own counsel.​

​     Instead I could noose the bedsheet round my neck, hook myself up in the closet, throw my weight forward, choke myself off.​

​     I could hide behind the door, wait until she comes, hobbles along the hall, bearing whatever sentence, penance, punishment, jump out at her, knock her down, kick her sharply and accurately in the head. To put her out of her misery, and myself as well. To put her out of our misery.​

​     It would save time.​

​     I could walk at a steady pace down the stairs and out the front door and along the street, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and see how far I could get. Red is so visible.​

​     I could go to Nick’s room, over the garage, as we have done before. I could wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter. Now that the need is real. 

Summarise and list each of Offred’s options.​

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1. Which do you feel she is most tempted by?​

2. Which might you do in her situation?​

3. Are there any other options which she has not considered?​

Chapter forty-six pg 

What does the previous handmaid, the woman Offred describes as her ‘double’, represent? What does Atwood use her to symbolise?​

Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in mid-air under the chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us. Get it over, she says. I’m tired of this melodrama, I’m tired of keeping silent. There’s no one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished.  

Chapter forty-six pg 

Re-read the ending scene, from “As I'm standing up I hear the black van.” to the end of the chapter. ​

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​1. How does Atwood build tension through the end of Offred’s narrative?​

2. Choose and analyse 3 pieces of evidence.

"He calls me by my real name" 

1. How does Nick know Offred’s real name? How do we know Offred’s real name? What is the significance of this?​

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2. In what way is the theme of names and naming important in The Handmaid’s Tale? To what extent are names a form of power as well as a mark of identity? 

Chapter Forty-six 

The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. The two of them, one on either side now, take me by the elbows to help me in. Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped.​

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And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

The ending of Offred’s narration is ambiguous, and we never find out whether her story ended in ‘darkness’ or ‘light’.​

​1. Looking at the final image we are left with, do you think this is a bleak or a hopeful ending? ​

2. What do you think is the significance of Offred’s narrative having a lack of closure? What could the anticlimactic lack of finality represent?​