Offred in red Handmaid clothing beside an armed guard in The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 5 analysis

par · Lecture: 18 minutes
  1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: Gilead, power and resistance
  2. The Handmaid’s Tale: analysis of the opening chapter
  3. The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 2 Analysis: Offred’s Room, Identity and Control
  4. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 5 analysis
  5. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 25 analysis
  6. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 41 analysis

In chapter 5 of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred and Ofglen meet a group of Japanese tourists. The scene looks minor at first, but it exposes one of Gilead’s central mechanisms: women are controlled through visibility, clothing, speech and shame. Yet the tourists also awaken Offred’s memories of her former body, her former clothes and her former freedom.

Chapter 5 is built around a brief public encounter. Offred and Ofglen are walking in Gilead when they meet Japanese tourists. These visitors come from outside the regime, and their presence immediately creates a clash between two worlds: the controlled, colour-coded, puritanical world of Gilead and the freer, more exposed world that Offred once inhabited.

The chapter matters because it turns looking into a political act. Who is allowed to look? Who must look down? Who can speak? Who must remain silent? Who is visible as a person, and who is reduced to a symbol? Through this apparently simple scene, Margaret Atwood explores surveillance, modesty, internalised ideology, body memory and Offred’s fragile movement towards consciousness.

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Offred sitting in her room beside a partly open window in The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 2 Analysis: Offred’s Room, Identity and Control

par · Lecture: 20 minutes
  1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: Gilead, power and resistance
  2. The Handmaid’s Tale: analysis of the opening chapter
  3. The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 2 Analysis: Offred’s Room, Identity and Control
  4. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 5 analysis
  5. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 25 analysis
  6. The Handmaid’s Tale: Chapter 41 analysis

In chapter 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred’s room looks plain, domestic and almost harmless. Yet every object reveals Gilead’s machinery of control: the missing chandelier, the partly opening window, the absent glass, the prescribed red clothing and the distorted mirror all turn private space into a system of surveillance, discipline and identity theft.

Chapter 2 is one of the most important descriptive passages in Margaret Atwood’s novel. Nothing spectacular happens in terms of plot, which is precisely the point. Offred sits in a room, observes furniture, notices colours, dresses, leaves the room and walks through the Commander’s house. However, through this slow movement, Atwood teaches the reader how to read Gilead.

The chapter works like a coded inventory. A chair is never only a chair. A window is never only a window. A mirror is never only a mirror. Offred’s world has been designed to reduce action, thought, memory and selfhood. Therefore, the passage reveals the violence of Gilead not through direct explanation, but through objects, spaces and tiny acts of interpretation.

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Scottish flag and the Union Jack

Scotland: the Road to Independence

par · Lecture: 3 minutes
  1. Scotland: the State, the Nation, Home Rule, and Devolution
  2. The Act of Union of 1707
  3. Scottish Home Rule
  4. The rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP)
  5. The Scottish Parliament
  6. Scotland: the Road to Independence

Scottish Independence Referendum, 2014

In August 2009 the SNP announced a Referendum Bill would be included in its package of bills to be debated before Parliament in 2009–10, to hold a referendum on the issues of Scottish independence in November 2010.

The bill did not pass due to the SNP’s status as a minority administration, and due to the initial opposition to the Bill from all other major parties in the Scottish Parliament.

Following the Scottish Parliament general election, in 2011 the SNP had a majority in parliament and again brought forward an Independence Referendum Bill.

The Scottish Government also suggested that full fiscal autonomy for Scotland (known as « devo-max ») could be an alternative option in the vote.

The negotiation of the Edinburgh Agreement (2012) resulted in the UK government legislating to provide the Scottish Parliament with the power to hold the referendum.

The « devo-max » option was not included, however, as the Edinburgh Agreement stipulated that the referendum had to be a clear binary choice between independence or the existing devolution arrangements.

The Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Act 2013 was passed by the Scottish Parliament and campaigning commenced. Two days before the referendum was held, with polls very close, the leaders of the three main UK political parties made « The Vow », a public pledge to devolve « extensive new powers » to the Scottish Parliament if independence was rejected. They also agreed to a devolution timetable proposed by Gordon Brown.

After heavy campaigning by both sides, voting took place on 18 September 2014. Independence was rejected by a margin of 45% in favour to 55% against.

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