1. Freya, Lily, Gabby, Shannon, Rosie
VIII Birthday
Freya, Lily, Gabby, Shannon, Rosie

2. What role does Moira play throughout the novel and to what effect?
Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship.
Gilead claims to promote solidarity between women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty tyranny.
The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college onward does not exist in Gilead.
In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to Gilead.
She is a lesbian, which means that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values.
More than that, she is the only character who stands up to authority directly by make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center.
The manner in which she escapes—taking off her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Aunt— symbolizes her rejection of Gilead’s attempt to define her identity.
From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternative to the meek subservience and acceptance of one’s fate that most of the Handmaids adopt.
When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebel’s, servicing the Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate.
After embodying resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to exemplify the way a totalitarian state can crush even the most independent spirit.

3. Moira does escape working at the toxic dump by agreeing to work at the house of prostitution, Jezebel's, but it would be difficult to consider her the same rebellious spirit that we see her at the beginning of the story.
Her clothes are tattered, she and the other women use drugs, and she is as much as a "whore" as the handmaid who are used for purposes of breeding. 
Rather than rebellious and victorious at the end, Moira is beaten. In saying she has a good life it is more likely she is speaking out of desperation or because she is told to say that or her life would be even worse.
She is important in the novel because she demonstrates the strength of the party-how it can reduce even a woman of rebellious strength to a worn woman dressed in a tattered bunny costume.
She is every bit as much of a sexual object as those forced to be vessels for pregnancy--maybe even more so. She shows the difficulty of escape this sexual totalitarian society

4. What role does Janine play throughout the novel and to what effect?
Offred knows Janine from their time at the Red Center.
After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren.
She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an “Unbaby” - and there are rumours that her doctor fathered the child.
Janine is a conformist, always ready to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all authority figures.
Offred holds Janine in contempt for taking the easy way out.

5. Offred sees Janine as an object of both pity and revulsion.
While she is in the same position as the other women at the Center, Janine seems to crave attention and behave differently from the others: "she had another child, once, I know that from the Center, when she used to cry about it at night, like the rest of us only more noisily" (pg 135).
Janine seems to cry "more noisily" than the other mothers who have lost children as if to outdo them, as if her grief is more real or important. The narrator seems to imply that by acting out her grief so loudly, Janine actually proved that it was less authentic than the others'.
The last time the narrator sees Janine is at the Particicution, where she has become completely unhinged: "Her eyes have come loose [...] she's in free fall, she's in withdrawal" (pg 292).
Janine can't handle this new reality, so she just checks out. Instead of sympathizing with her, the narrator is disgusted: "Easy out, is what I think. I don't even feel sorry for her, although I should. I feel angry" (pg 292).

6. How does Atwood use elements of comedy to help manage the terrible oppressive world of Gilead and Offred’s experience within it?
Mao launched an appeal to those who believed in his ideas, and China's youth responded by forming the Red Guards. China's citizens found that, just as in Gilead, ‘The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical'
Intellectuals were particularly singled out for ill-treatment and University life came to an end, as it does in Gilead
Books were, as Offred comments wryly about Gilead in chapter 15, seen as ‘an incendiary device' and were burned wholesale. Links to Dictator Mao who also destroyed all books except for ‘the Little Red Book', the Thoughts of Chairman Mao in China from Links also to Nazi Germany.
"Books … an oasis of the forbidden" – This links with other science fiction worlds where reading is forbidden or severely restricted, as in George Orwell's 1984 or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit or in real-life situations such as in China during the Cultural Revolution.
There is debate about whether abortions should be allowed if an ultra-sound scan in pregnancy reveals that the baby has serious physical defects. However, campaigners against this suggest that even very minor deformities may lead to a child being aborted. Atwood raises this particular issue in chapter 19, where Offred tells us that, in Gilead there are no scans, and asks: ‘What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can't have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term.'
Satire in Offred's rhetorical question about eggs, "If I have an egg what more can I want?"
"Aunts … allowed to read and write "- Literacy is seen as too dangerous a weapon to allow to other women, and reading is a very restricted activity. Even the Commander is allowed no books except the Bible. Form of linguistic repression.

7. What issues about women’s bodies, birth and rights are explored?
Egg cup represents the handmaids, in that they are only used to ‘keep their eggs safe’.
“The kind that looks like a woman’s torso, in a skirt. Under the skirt is the second egg, being kept warm”
“You can’t have them taken out” – right of abortion abolished. Even in the circumstance the baby may be ill or it could be fatal to the handmaid.
Eg. “The greater the risk the greater the glory”
“They were lazy women, she says. They were sluts” slut shaming, choice on women not wanting to have children was mocked, although it was their body/choice.
“pearls” – ironic, as precious and valued, opposite to Offred
“the guardian herds us out” – emphasis on ‘herds’, reference to animalistic objectification
“Sometimes the movie she showed us…” page 128, whole paragraph. Shows propaganda in Gilead.

8. “Birth day” - although we usually refer to someone's ‘birthday', Atwood separates the two words to stress the significance for the Handmaids of a day when one of them gives birth
Reference to “unwomen”. This is how Aunt Lydia references women who try to oppose the new scheme and laws of Gilead, which shows how there was a lack of respect towards those who tried to express individuality and fight for their own rights; for example abortion rights (“you cant have them taken out”) and sexual liberation particularly within the 1960s.
The use of repetition as the women gathers at the Offwarrens birth – “Hold, hold. Expel, expel, expel. We chant”. The use of repetition shows how the women are almost robotic, and programmed into this new life; where they are only expected to produce a child. The use of the word “chant” is also effective in showing how this situation is like a ritual.
Use of “unbabies” – which refers to deformed infants. This shows how society does not consider them human and worthless – as they will have no place or role within Gilead.
Offred think of Janine as a “whiny bitch” as women were forced to give birth without any painkillers or medical intervention as this is what was stated in the bible. This therefore shows the lack of control a women has over her own body.

9. “pesky animals” – animalistic imagery of women
“pesky animals” – animalistic imagery of women. Women are constantly degraded throughout, not to be trusted.
“The gravid smell of earth and grass” – a constant reminder to the handmaids of their purpose to provide a child. They are no longer allowed to enjoy the natures of the world but are rather forced to live in fear of the outcomes of failing to do their “jobs” – which is reflected within the reference to “earth and grass” within this quote.
“Little whores, all of them” - The hierarchical system in Gilead creates divisions between women, increasing and emphasising their powerlessness.
When the Birthmobile arrives to collect Offred, they are told to “lock the double doors”, which shows how this resembles a prison van – no women can escape from the laws of Gilead – as if they are prisoners within their own body.
All of her memories are “reconstructions” – such as her meetings with the commander. This is perhaps because she knows of her little place within Gilead, and how Serena Joy could punish her if she ever found out; due to the hierarchy system. It also shows how brainwashed women in this society has become as she is disappointed in herself for her lack of obedience.