Border escape attempt

The border escape attempt is the failed flight of Offred, Luke, and their daughter from the Republic of Gilead, a desperate bid for freedom that ends in betrayal and capture, shattering the family and condemning Offred to the life of a Handmaid. This event is the catastrophic hinge on which the entire narrative turns, transforming a woman with a name, a husband, and a child into the property of the state, and its memory haunts every moment of her subsequent existence.

Causes and Background

The escape was not a sudden impulse but a calculated response to the accelerating collapse of civil liberties. After the President's Day Massacre, when the Congress was machine-gunned and the army declared a state of emergency, the Constitution was suspended. "Keep calm," they said on television. "Everything is under control." Offred's job at a library, where she transferred books to computer discs, was eliminated by a new law: women could no longer work. Her Compunumber was frozen, her bank account seized. "Women can't hold property anymore," Moira told her. "It's a new law." The roadblocks and Identipasses appeared. The Pornomarts were shut, but that was only a prelude. Offred's mother's apartment was found ransacked, the mattress ripped open, the contents strewn; she herself had vanished. Luke, Offred, and their daughter had been living in a state of suspended animation, but the net was tightening. They decided to run.

The Plan and the Journey

The plan was to cross the border into Canada on a forged day-trip visa. They had almost nothing with them, to avoid the appearance of a permanent departure. The forged passports were guaranteed, purchased not with money—impossible under the Compucount system—but with heirlooms: Offred's grandmother's jewelry and a stamp collection Luke had inherited from his uncle. They told their daughter they were going on a picnic, and a picnic basket with hard-boiled eggs and a thermos sat on the back seat beside her. Offred wore her hiking boots; the little girl wore sneakers with a design of hearts on the laces—red, purple, pink, and yellow. Luke drove. Offred sat beside him. The sun shone, the sky was blue, the houses as they passed looked comforting and ordinary. Offred planned to give the child a sleeping pill before they crossed, so she would not betray them with a frightened word. They would spend the night in the car on a side road, then drive over the bridge in the morning, "easily, just like driving to the supermarket." They passed the first checkpoint outside the city without incident; the license matched the passport. Luke squeezed Offred's hand. "You're white as a sheet," he said. She felt transparent, as if there was not much left of her. Luke began to sing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning." Offred worried that they looked too happy.

The Moment of Betrayal

At the border, the man took their passports inside the immigration building. Luke got out of the car to watch through the window. Offred stayed in the car, lit a cigarette, and watched two soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms standing idly beside the yellow-and-black-striped barrier. She prayed: "Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I'll do anything." Then Luke got back into the car too fast, reversed, and said he was picking up the phone. He began to drive very quickly. After that came the dirt road and the woods. They jumped out of the car and began to run. Offred was running, holding her daughter's hand, pulling her through the bracken. The child was only half awake because of the pill Offred had given her, so she would not cry or say anything that would give them away. The ground was uneven, full of rocks and dead branches. The child could not run fast enough. Offred thought about her drowning and that thought slowed her. Then the shots came behind them—not loud, not like firecrackers, but sharp and crisp like a dry branch snapping. Offred pulled the girl to the ground and rolled on top of her to cover her, shield her. She curled herself around the child, keeping her hand over her mouth. "It's all right, I'm here," she whispered. But it was too late. They came apart. Offred's arms were held, and the edges went dark. The last image she held was of her daughter going away from her through the trees, holding out her arms, being carried away.

Consequences and Aftermath

The escape failed because they were expected. Someone had betrayed them—a neighbor watching the car pull out, or the man who sold them the passports, paid twice. "The moment of betrayal is the worst," Offred reflects, "the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil." Luke was almost certainly killed; Offred imagines him lying face down in a thicket, or sitting in a gray cement rectangle, unshaven, his hands painful to move. Their daughter was taken and adopted by a childless couple of the upper echelons. Offred herself was arrested, declared an adulteress because her marriage to Luke was his second, and sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center—the Red Center—where she was stripped of her name and identity, tattooed on the ankle, and trained to be a Handmaid. The escape attempt is the wound that never heals, the story she cannot stop telling herself, the proof that hope is both necessary and lethal. It is the reason she is in the Commander's house, kneeling on the floor of the sitting room, waiting for the Ceremony. It is the reason she has become a two-legged womb, a national resource, a missing person.