#8- Handmaid's Tale

"I threw the magazine into the flames. It riffled open in the wind of its burning; big flakes of paper came loose, sailed into the air, still on fire, parts of women's bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes" (39).

Flames often symbolize destruction but at the same time, rebirth (the phoenix). Here, the destruction is not only in the physical magazine but in women's freedom. Atwood explains that "parts of women's bodies [were] turning to black ash" to symbolize the destruction of women's fertility and freedom. The society is being reborn, redesigned, to restrict women's abilities. Atwood uses this burning of the magazine to show that change. Offred says that she sees this happen "before her eyes" meaning she was there when this change was set into motion. This separates her from the later generation of women who do not know what society was like before this transformation.

Work Cited:
Photo Credit:
"Phoenix." Cracked.com.  2005. Cracked entertainment. 30 Aug. 2010 <http://www.cracked.com/funny-5803-phoenix/>.