Lit Log #2, close reading

The chapters containing the secret club left me very confused, particularly chapter 38 where Moira was talking about her escape attempt. The only thing I could think about when reading this section was the eyes’ involvement with it. There is no way they dont know the club exists. Let’s establish that first. Throughout the book various characters are scared the rooms in the houses are bugged, if the eyes have a reach like that, there is a very small chance they don’t know about the club. During chapter 38 on page 243, when Moira and Offred are talking in the bathroom they say, “I look up at the ceiling. ‘Is it bugged?’ …. ‘Probably,’ says Moira.” The people working there assume the eyes know everything about everything all the time.

Why don’t the eyes shut it down? They seem to spend more time and energy busting smaller crimes in the gilead like a single x-handmade Moira escaping. They go through all that energy for a single person and yet there is a club with countless people breaking the rules and they don’t shut it down. This is one of those situations where the eyes could shut it down but then their whole system falls apart. all the commanders are protected because of their numbers. Maybe the eyes can afford to replace that many commanders at once. If they busted all the commanders word would spread and the act of rebellion the club symbolized might give people in the Red Center hope.

Another possibility is that the eyes let it exist so that all the trouble making and rule breaking happens in a more confined hidden away place. If the club is abolished all the rule breaking might spread to other places less hidden from the general public. Later in the chapter when Moira is talking about how she was captured something just seemed off. She said “I won’t go into what happened after that. I’d rather not talk about it. All I can say is that they didn’t leave any marks.” (248) This just doesn’t seem like Moira’s character at all. In the beginning of the book she is portrayed to be the brave reckless one, escaping, threatening to kill one of the Aunts. And now all a sudden she doesn’t want to talk about what the eyes did to her after she got caught. It seems like there wasn’t physical pain, but maybe more of a psychological torture or conditioning. Something that would alter her character into not wanting to speak on it. Possibly this is related to the earlier quote about the room being bugged.

My running theory is she told Offred too much and the eyes came back and took her. The chapter ends with a very ominous “I never saw her again.”(250) so possibly that was connected. But why did the eyes let her come back to gilead in the first place? They caught her trying to escape and they just let her come back to the club. And she seemed content at the club. Like she was done running. That doesn’t seem like her. The eyes sent her back to work at the club, so it’s confirmed that they knew about it, they just didn’t want her at the red center. The eyes seem to be weirdly human. They gave Moira a choice of what she wanted to do after she directly broke the law. Overall the chapter was very confusing to me, there’s so much mystery around the eyes and what their intent is.