Offred has left the Commander’s compound with her “double” (she doesn’t feel like an individual), and reflects on how the other houses in the area are large like her Commander’s. She mentions the façades (false fronts) of the houses, which give us the idea of houses, family, and people having fake appearance on the outside. The neighborhood has the quality of not being real but like a model or museum. Artificiality is the key idea here. Everything is contrived. Nothing is as it seems. We learn that this is the heart of Gilead (the geographical and spiritual center) and the war is far away. Aunt Lydia is invoked again. She had said to the Handmaids that “Gilead...knows no bounds. Gilead is within you” (23). This is a paraphrase, or a corruption, of Luke 17:20-21 of the New Testament, the idea that the kingdom of God is not a physical place but within everyone. If Atwood also had Tolstoy in mind then there’s an added irony because Tolstoy’s book The Kingdom of God is Within You is about nonviolent resistance, an idea...