| SIMILE (quote + page number) | ANALYSIS (what does it contribute to the reader’s understanding, what techniques/devices are used, what is revealed about character or theme) | Student Name |
| “Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting to the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloudcover.” p.201 | Margaret Atwood uses antithesis to show the moon how bright it is during the night. | Owen |
| ”buttered, I lie on my single bed, flat like a piece of toast” | ||
| ” It makes the men look like dolls on which faces have not yet been painted, like scarecrows, which in à way is what they are, since they are meant to scare.” (p. 38) | The objectification shows an important aspect of the book. It represents the position of those who don’t follow rules in society. If they don’t follow rules then they show the exemple as dolls that can be sacrificed when not conformed, manipulated till the beginning to the end. Used for one goal, maintain power in place. | Clément |
| ”Or I would help Rita, to make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft resistant warmth which is so much like flesh.“ p17 | Offred doesn’t have any pleasure to help for the community tasks : she compares the texture she is touching (bread) to flesh which is a degrading comparaison. | Irénée |
| « It’s like a fart in church. » (p94) | The situation is uncomfortable, Serena Joy doesn’t want to be heard crying and Offred is trying to stop herself from laughing just like a fart in church which you don’t want people to hear and for others that are trying to hold there laughter. | Esther |
| “I will | Offred | Victorious Victor |
| “I wait, washed, brushed like a prize pig” (p75) | This similie is very important as it shows how the handmaid’s, and particularly offered, feels about their place in the society. It is one of the first time that she clearly considers her placas as a very degrading state for a human being. But at the same time she is in the consideration of being a prize and is happy to be considered valuable. Q | Gatien |
| ”I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier-glass, like the eye of a fish” (p15) | Offred feels watched by an eye. The eye is the society. Everywhere she goes, everything she does, is controlled. She doesn’t have any liberty and private time, She is paranoid, she sees eyes everywhere and think that even walls are listening to her. | Carla |
| ”like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairytale figure…” (p15) | Offred created a fictional world in which has full control of the plot in some part of her mind in order to maintain a good mental state and not a have a mental breakdown. | |
| “It’s like a party she couldn’t go to.” p141 | Cora wants to be included and is feeling left out, because Martha’s aren’t allowed to go to the birthing ceremonies. The birthing ceremonies are of great importance showing of the Handmaid’s failed or not. | Melina |
| ”They pick him up and heave him into the back of the van like a sack of mail.”
(pg175) |
Ever since Gilead became a reality people are treated more like objects rather than actual people. They do not care if they get hurt. | Pablo |
| It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit. | Offref remembers when she and her family tried to escape across the Canadian border but were caught. She compare this moment of betrayal to the terror of being in an elevator whose cable has been cut at the top. | Mamadou |
| Not all of you will make it through. Some of you will fall on dry ground or thorns. Some of you are shallow-rooted. . . think of yourselves as seeds. . . | Offred talked about the comparison between the handmaid and the seed made by the aunts, which evokes the biblical simile of seed sowing and how these seeds grow in different soils. | Lola |
| ”We are containers, it’s only the inside of our bodies that are important. The outside can become hard and wrinkled, for all they care, like the shell of a nut” (p.107) | This quote shows how unimportant and non-essential the handmaid’s physical appearance and mental health is to the government of Gilead. It shows how the society of Gilead only cares about the handmaids’ ability to bear children, and how they are put aside and neglected, and treated like objects. | Zara |
| ”Surprising how much like a small, begging child [Rita] makes me feel, simply by her scowl, her stolidity; how importunate and whiny.” (p. 214) | This simile illustrates how Offred is not free in her choices, how inferior she is to anyone from a hierarchical point of view. It takes her back to childhood, when she had to ask her mother to do or have something. She is not treated like a woman, but really like an irresponsible child. | Clémence |