The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 36 Literary Analysis

Chapter Thirty-Six: themes, motifs, character arcs, and style analysis for this chapter.

By Margaret Atwood

46 chapters

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter 36Literary Analysis

In this passage the narrator adopts a masquerade as an act of agency, “dressing up” with a salvaged feathered garment, sequined cups, and a sky‑blue cloaking hood. The materiality of the costume—feathers, mauve heels, antique lipstick—functions as a palimpsest of pre‑Gilead culture, invoking the “Manhattan Cleanup” and the black‑market circulation of banned textiles. By re‑appropriating these objects she creates a foreground of sensual memory that directly contests the regime’s visual hegemony.

The spatial trajectory moves from the intimate domestic interior of the Commander’s house to the public sphere of streets, checkpoints, and a clandestine back‑entrance. The narrative architecture mirrors the regime’s ocular‑surveillance: each checkpoint is described in procedural detail (“window rolling electrically down and up”, “passes to be shown”), yet the Handmaid’s disguise allows her to slip past the institutional gaze. The car ride, described through the tactile proximity to the Commander’s polished shoes, foregrounds the embodied power differential while simultaneously exposing a fissure—her skin is “almost bare”, the cloak “stifling hot”, the scent of mothballs signals a reclaimed, subversive intimacy.

The use of the mirror, identified as Serena Joy’s, operates as a metonymic “reflective” device: it not only provides a literal visual check of the narrator’s appearance but also symbolically reflects the internalized self‑surveillance she has learned to subvert. The narration’s present‑tense, fragmented utterances (“I know my voice sounds prudish…”, “I want him to feel I’m doing him a favour”) create a narrative rhythm that oscillates between compliance and resistance, echoing earlier chapters’ dialectic of spatial confinement and sensory memory.

Interpersonal dynamics are layered through the Commander’s paternalistic touch (“hold of my right hand”) and Nick’s peripheral, almost invisible presence. The Commander’s instructions—“If anyone asks you, say you’re an evening rental”—expose a bureaucratic language that the narrator must adopt, echoing the earlier “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” subversive mantra. Yet the act of wearing the costume, applying makeup with “runny” lipstick and smudged eyeliner, and pulling the hood over the face re‑asserts the narrator’s capacity to rewrite her visual identity within the regime’s prescribed codex.

Stylistically, Atwood employs vivid, synesthetic description (the “feathers mauve and pink”, “tiny stars” sequins, the “runny” grape‑scented lipstick) to render the sensory world of rebellion palpable. The juxtaposition of the theatrical garment with the oppressive architecture of checkpoints and the Commander’s car intensifies the tension between public spectacle and private transgression. The chapter thus extends the ocular‑surveillance trajectory into a liminal zone where performance, material culture, and spatial navigation converge as a site of covert resistance.