The Handmaid's Tale- offglen and offred's Relationship

Offred and Ofglen

When Offred and Ofglen first meet in the novel, Ofglen is shown to be pious and a dutiful Handmaid it seems as though they both abide by the constitution and this is evident through their use of phatic talk and the amount of religious language in their speech. “The war is going well, I hear,” … “Praise be,” … “We’ve been sent good weather”. By using phatic talk and religious language, Atwood implies the traditional family values that Gilead’s constitution has enforced. This is because the quotes evokes the idea that women do not have the freedom of speech and that they are the minority- their voices are restrained. These quotes also suggest that their speech consists of adjacency pairs, showing their contrived conversation.

However, later on in the novel, Atwood portrays their increasing affection for each other. For the description of most of their time together, the narrator uses the collective personal pronoun “we”. This juxtaposes Offred’s previous opinions about Ofglen, as “we” can indicate a sense of unity and the idea of them being a team. During the course of the novel, Ofglen becomes more communicative and they start to become blasphemous together.

“This one is a little plumper than I am”, “like a trained pig’s”- this depicts the condescending tone Offred possesses when she first sees Ofglen. The animalistic imagery of the “pig” dehumanises her and this might be because of her distrust towards Ofglen, as Offred may be suspecting her of being a ‘true believer’. Even though the narrator distrusts Ofglen, she, however, realises that deep down, the two of them have no choice but to act the way they do, otherwise they are to be punished. “I think of her as a woman for whom every act is done for show… But that is what I must look like to her”. This evokes that the narrator seems to be criticising Ofglen of the things she does not like