Offred begins the chapter thinking about how her recollection of a particular event that just occurred is a reconstruction in her mind. She calls into question how memory works concerning a remembered event but also how the running story she’s telling in her mind is reconstructed. If something is reconstructed, it cannot be 100% like the original. There is no such thing as a perfect memory of events so then there can never be, now or later, a perfect retelling of everything that’s happened to her during these days or in her whole life. She understands biases, misunderstood gestures, etc., will forever muddle any retelling. Hence, she is admitting she will, no matter how hard she tries, be something of an unreliable narrator. In reporting true events, anyone will be. But we get back around to the particular event she’s trying to reconstruct. But first with a bit of preface. She tries to tell any male readers of her future story that she'll one day write down that, being a woman, it’s very easy to be tempted to forgive men. (This...
Chapter Summary
Offred considers how the story she’s telling, the entire narrative she’s been telling her audience, is a reconstruction of events (which are, as you will find out in the “Historical Notes”). She’s aware that any reconstruction of events has its problems with accuracy—especially due to nuances in individual perspective. She begins transitioning into the story she will tell about the Commander, who is in most control of her current circumstances. Yet, she feels apologetic in a way no men will ever understand in a woman’s perspective: being taken advantage of and at the same time feeling like she needs to forgive men for the way they are. As far as the current story, she plans on getting out of her current circumstances one day. She can’t do this Handmaid thing forever.