A tourist's .
stiletto heels are "delicate instruments of torture"; fluffy clouds are thought of as "headless sheep" and .
urinals "look oddly like babies" coffins". The Commander's Wife herself is described as having a chin .
"clenched like a fist". Further on in the book, when Moira has been violently punished for faking an illness; .
". she could not walk for a week. They looked like drowned feet, swollen and boneless, except for the .
color. They looked like lungs." All these violent, disgusting images are evidence for Offred's deteriorating .
state of health. Other similes mentioned are not so much violent as they are strange; at one stage, Offred .
compares herself to a piece of toast. .
The author also uses color as a powerful symbolic device. The color red is referred to many times .
in the novel, most notably when Offred describes herself as "a Sister, dipped in blood." This image in .
particular refers to menstruation, a process the Handmaids have grown to dread as it proves they have .
"failed" once again. The reoccurring image of the tulips in the garden also relates to this as they are also red .
and compared to blood: ". a darker crimson toward the stem, as if they had been cut and are beginning to .
heal there." .
We are informed, primarily in Chapter Two, that any object that may aid suicide is strictly out of .
bounds in Offred's accommodation because of her mental state. The pictures have no glass; the window .
only opens partly; there are no light fixtures or hooks, or "anything you could tie a rope to". Later on in the .
novel, Offred greatly covets the Marthas, and the fact that the Commander's Wife is allowed to knit. Her .
ecstatic happiness in finding the word "FAITH" printed on a .
cushion; "I can spend minutes, tens of minutes, running my eyes over the print" and finding a scratched .
inscription on the inside of the wardrobe is also evidence that being trapped in a world where there is .
absolutely no way out is slowly driving Offred to madness and despair.
