We begin with a bleak tone. She can’t escape her reality, though she wakes up every morning hoping she’ll be back in her own home. So we have the subject of hope and the motif of being “outside of time/echo of the past.” The sense that hope is a cruel thing is thus reinforced. Time is even hard to gauge. No reason to put ticks or lines on the wall as in a jail cell since there’s no counting down to freedom. Instead, she goes by moon (menstrual) cycles. Lunar time instead of our solar clock and calendar. Also, the holiday Labor Day has been repurposed. It’s not about worker’s rights, but about women and labor—but we don’t know much more about it. Also, they’ve gotten rid of Independence Day. The reader can guess that any holiday that has “independence” in it would be dangerous since it might give citizens the idea of personal independence. I’m sure that’s why the narrator thinks about that holiday at the same time as “Labor Day.” That one definitely had to do with personal freedoms...