Blog # 3

I think the commander is a very weird guy. He must be like 20 years older than her but he wants her to kiss him like she meant it. He is old enough to be her father. Another thing I'm wondering about is why are the handmaids stripped of their names? What is so shameful about keeping their old names? With their new names Offred are spelled like "of fred" and same thing with ofwarren and ofglen. Did they make up the names to refer to these women as properties? Often you hear people say that the current culture is wrong and shameful because it depicts women as properties but not as much as in this story. How could they say that they are giving the women freedom when they are counted as objects. Also, the commander is very weird, why does he want to play scrabble with her? If he wanted the kiss he should have asked for it, and if he wanted to play scrabble, he could have asked his men to play with him, less risk that way. Even if someone found out about the kiss, I don't think it would have been more troublesome for him than if they found out he let her play scrabble. The narrator mentions one of the Aunt always tell her to manipulate the men and lead them by the nose. How does that make them better than before? Stringing men along will lead to something disasterous. How can a woman not be a slut but at the same time using sexuality to manipulate men? Also, I don't understand what is their reason for doing this. If they want to repopulate, shouldn't they need to do their ceremony more than once per month? And if they want to repopulate why not let every single men get married, that way, there is a lot more chance. Why would they think that older men are more fit to reproduce than younger men?