Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale Analysis on: Chapter XIV Salvaging

Offred's affair with Nick is the third in a series of affairs. Twice, Offred has consciously "stolen" a man from another woman, though with the Commander she did not have much choice in the matter. Nick, however, is stolen from no one. Her actions are illicit in the context of the regime, but romantic in the reader's eyes. Thus, her affair with Nick is a reminder that sex united with love does not belong in the same category as sex in the absence of love. Offred and Nick's relationship clarifies the viewpoint of the novel in that it suggests that sex cannot be regulated by law, because nothing can govern love. The Commander dismisses Offred's suggestion that the regime has forgotten to provide for love, but he does so without a true understanding of love's power. The regime considers love unimportant, but it is clearly love that ultimately holds the power to destroy the regime.

Ironically, it is also a form of love that puts Offred in tremendous danger. When Serena Joy finds the costume Offred wore to Jezebel's, she feels that Offred has betrayed her, despite her understanding of Offred's situation. Earlier in the novel, Offred thinks about how Moira criticized her earlier affair with Luke, even though she wound up marrying him, and wonders what Moira would have thought of her affair with the Commander. Once again, Atwood seems to be pointing to similarities between the world of Gilead and the ordinary world. Did Offred owe anything to Luke's previous wife? Does she owe any kind of allegiance to Serena Joy?

Another important theme that reasserts itself in this section of the novel is the power of language. Here, Offred directly addresses the fact that she is "constructing" her story:

   “ I wish this story were different...I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to ones life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. Maybe it is about those things, in a way; but in the meantime there is so much else getting in the way...I've tries to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?”

The confusion, the lack of a clear thread, is carefully constructed. The story is told as Offred wishes to tell it, rather than in an objective manner, which would have shown reflection, and would have cancel that spontaneity that is so striking about the text.

In this section, Offred also articulates more clearly whom the story is intended for. Though she does not directly state Luke's name, she certainly alludes to him when she says, "I am coming to a part you will not like at all, because in it I did not behave well, but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out." The point of Offred's ramblings, however, is not entirely clear. She says (presumably to Luke), "By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you...I believe you into being." Yet it seems possible that Offred tells the story not only to believe Luke into being, but also to believe herself [Offred] into being. She has to hold on to something, a thought, in order to believe that she is still alive. She has to reattach her soul to her old self in order to survive. She betrays Luke not by sleeping with another man, but by telling another man her story, by telling him everything. Offred offers her story to Nick and to us, the readers, because only through telling it can she "feel that [she is] known."

In order to reveal Offred's desires more clearly to the reader, Atwood provides us with a scene that sharply contrasts with the intimations of love. One of the worst deaths the novel has to offer is Ofglen's death, because the reader does not have the possibility to realise that she has disappeared: she is replaced by another woman with the same name, and essentially the same appearance. There is no hole standing where she once was. Ofglen is an example of what happens to the woman whose story has not been told. Though she was braver than Offred, and possibly more deserving of our interest, she ceases to exist as soon as she is dead. We do not know her name, so it is as if she did not exist.

This chapter is very strong as it is the key to understanding why Offred is telling her story. By opening up to Nick she has found the thrive to silently resist Gilead’s regime, using the most powerful weapon: love. But we also understand her need and agonising remorse for telling her story. She has to believe that the end will come so she will be spared and live on.