This chapter begins with a grim and ominous tone. “The bell is tolling.” This brings the idea of a death knell, a bell which is rung announcing someone’s death. In literature, there’s a phrase by John Donne (1600s) that talks about whom that bell might be tolling for. When it tolls for someone else, it’s as if it tolls for him as well because the loss of anyone in humanity is also a loss for him since he is part of humanity. Below are several lines of the poem. "Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. … No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as...
Chapter 42
Part XIV: Salvaging
Chapter Summary
During a televised "Salvaging" ceremony at the former university grounds, Aunt Lydia presides over the hanging of three women - a Wife and two Handmaids - while refusing to announce their crimes to prevent copycat incidents, leaving the assembled women to speculate about their offenses. As the Wife is hanged with a white bag over her head, the Handmaids must participate in a ritualistic gesture of consent by touching a rope that winds through their rows and placing their hands over their hearts, though Offred can barely stand to watch, focusing instead on the rope to avoid witnessing the execution.