Friends,

I have just read one of the most heart-breaking scenes in my life.  When I read this passage in the Handmaids Tale, I literally cried.  In this passage, Ofglen is given the chance to see her daughter by Serena Joy.  But also Serena Joy isn't doing it out of the goodness of her heart.  It is obvious by the way she speaks to Ofglen that she particularly enjoys torturing Ofglen in her lowest moment.  Which is a pretty disgusting thing because all Ofglen has in this book is low moments where is is really miserable.  There are people who say that her personality is not admirable at all but she doesn't have to be.  She is a normal woman who still in the past.  To be honest I highly admire her for her patience, because that is such a rare thing to see these days, especially  in the darkest of times.  Never have I seen Ofglen lose her temper, especially with people like the Commander and Serena Joy.  If it was me I would be really pissed off.  My pride gets in the way, I can't stand people like the Commander or Serena Joy.
So back to the scene in the book.  This is the passage:

       "I take it from her, turn i t around so I can see right-side up.  Is this her, is this what she's like?  My treasure.
       So tall and changed.  Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as id for an olden-days First Communion.
       Time has not stood still.  It has washed over me, washed me away, as id I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.  I have been obliterated for her.  I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph.  As shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become.  You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.
       But she exists, in her white dress.  She grows and lives.  Isn't that a good thing?  A blessing?
       Still, I can't bear it, to have been erased like that.  Better she'd brought me nothing.

I still sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork.  I have a fork and spoon, but never a knife.  When there's meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth.  I have both, however.  That's why I'm not allowed a knife."

Wow that was so powerful.  That paragraph is both in of the saddest and best passages I have ever read.  The simplicity and passion and despair is so evident.  Before this scene it states "'You can have it for a minute,' Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial.  ' I have to return it, before they know it's missing'".  See that part is what pisses me off.  Serena Joy sees that Ofglen is in her lowest moment and there is no need to push her down but she continues to try to destroy her emotionally.  I guess she is trying to do that so that Ofglen and be more obedient than she already is.  The human mind can be so confusing sometimes, there at most times never a logical reason we do things.  Sometime she just have these urges, we act on our emotions.  In Serena Joy's case, she seems to resent Ofglen for the mere fact she has the ability to have children while she can't.  Having children could also be associated with Serena's desire to be in a position of higher authority.  Because before she was a well-known speaker for the church and now she is the wife of the Commander where the highest prestige she can have is having a child of her own.  I guess that is the real reason why she want to have a child so badly, it would explain why she is perfectly fine with taking a child against a mother's will.

I understand what Ofglen is feeling.  It isn't only the fact that her lost her daughter that she is upset, it is the fact that even her child has become totally oblivious to her orgins.  Only Ofglen knows and acknowledges that she is the mother and without her the truth dies with her.  Imagine your child, the child that grew within you, that came from you and sought your presence as a babe, now is growing never to remember that again. Her child is stolen from her.

What I also admire about Ofglen is that even though she is so upset, she is able to later pick herself up in anger.  She has this anger and passion that comes out in a vengeance.  We know from this that Ofglen is ready to fight back, to make them pay.  She will no longer lay there and just do as she is told..  It is her time now.  Then Nick comes........

Always,

Nour