We join our narrator, Offred, as she’s reflecting on her first days in the Rachel and Leah Center, later referred to as the Red Center. The reader knows she’s remembering this event because she speaks in the past tense whereas she’ll begin speaking in the present tense in Chapter 2. Early on, she sets up the idea (which will become a motif) of an afterimage. An afterimage is the remaining sensation after the stimulus has ceased. In this context, it’s the remembrance of the way things used to be in a particular place before the brutal regime took over. She will also use the words “palimpsest” and “echo” to mean much the same thing, such as the “palimpsest of unheard sound,” on page 3 (which is also an interesting use of synesthesia).

This particular afterimage is one of teenage angst and sexuality. She imagines in this gymnasium teenagers set loose during a school dance—in a world that once was but no longer is. The image, the echo, the memory of the way things once were lingers in the gym during the time of the reeducation of the Handmaids. Everywhere Offred goes, she will be reminded, sadly, of the way things used to be.

She remembers being that age and yearning for the future and everything that adulthood had in store. (Quite an irony when the reader finds out what their real futures have become.) She says that yearning was still in the air, like an afterthought (she’s really piling on the “echo/palimpsest/afterthought motif here in the beginning). The narrator soon hits the reader with quite a contrast from the echo of freedom of the teenagers. She and the other Handmaids are sleeping on army cots, separated enough so they couldn’t speak. We now have the absence of the images she previously brought up (“hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot…” 3). Touch and intimacy, or lack thereof, will become important subjects that, in turn, become a motif throughout the novel.

We’re also introduced to a motif here: the Handmaids are treated like children. Alongside the army-issued goods, they have child-like flannel sheets. Yet, they’re also treated worse than children as the intimidating Aunts carry electric cattle prods meant to aid farmers in keeping cows in line. Quite an incongruity. (May the dehumanization begin!)

We learn a little about how this dystopian society is set up. These Aunts are in some way inferior to men (because they’re women?) and so can’t carry guns. The Guards can. The Guards, presumably all male, are stationed outside and aren’t allowed inside this place with infantilized, well-supervised women. These guards were picked out of what are called Angels (army men, you’ll soon learn), and are meant to be “objects of fear” (4) for the Handmaids. Yet, they are objects “of something else as well” (4). The reader can assume she means “objects of desire,” as the common phrase goes.

Offred voices the common fantasy of the Handmaids that they want to surreptitiously trade something for physical contact or intimacy. This need for touch and intimacy will be a motif throughout, also providing some very important plot points. Yet, humans in any condition learn how to adapt. The Handmaids have learned to communicate, and even touch each other’s hands, at night while lying in their army-issue cots. They’re also able to exchange their real names. Later, the Handmaids will receive names based on whose household they are living in. For now, we learn the names of some of Offred’s companions. Importantly, however, we don’t learn the narrator’s real name.