Match

In the Republic of Gilead, where every object is scrutinized for its potential as a weapon or a tool of subversion, the humble match becomes a charged and dangerous commodity. For Offred, a Handmaid stripped of nearly all autonomy, a single match is not merely a means to light a cigarette; it is a talisman of power, a key to a private fantasy of destruction, and a concrete link to a world of choice that has been forcibly taken from her. Its presence in her life marks a rare moment of negotiation and risk, transforming a mundane item into a symbol of both hope and the ever-present threat of annihilation.

Acquisition and the Politics of a Small Favor

Offred's acquisition of a match is a minor victory won through a complex social transaction. After Serena Joy, the Commander's Wife, offers Offred a cigarette as a gesture of collusion in their scheme to conceive a child through Nick, she instructs Offred to ask Rita, the Martha, for a match. This seemingly simple request is fraught with tension. Rita keeps the matches locked in a cupboard over the sink, a precaution against the summer heat and, more pointedly, against the unsupervised use of fire by the household's inhabitants. When Offred asks for a match, Rita's response is grudging and suspicious, muttering, "No call for you to have matches. Burn the house down." She only relents after Offred invokes Serena Joy's authority, handing over a single wooden match with a final warning: "Now don't you go setting fire to nothing." The exchange reveals the rigid hierarchies and mutual distrust that govern the household, where even a match is a privilege to be dispensed by those with power.

The Match as a Tool of Private Defiance

Once in her possession, the match becomes an object of intense, secret contemplation for Offred. She immediately considers alternatives to its intended use, demonstrating a strategic, survivalist mindset. She thinks of shredding the cigarette and flushing it away, or eating it for a nicotine high, but the match itself holds a greater allure. She imagines making a small hole in her mattress and sliding the match carefully inside, a hidden, thin thing that would never be noticed. "There it would be, at night, under me while I'm in bed. Sleeping on it." This act of concealment transforms the match from a simple tool into a secret companion, a source of private power. The thought of what it could do—"I could burn the house down. Such a fine thought, it makes me shiver"—provides a potent fantasy of agency and escape, a "quick and narrow" way out of her unbearable existence.

The Match in the Context of Forbidden Objects

The match belongs to a category of forbidden objects that Offred and the other Handmaids covet and secretly use to maintain a sense of self. Like the butter they smuggle from meals to use as hand lotion—a trick learned at the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center—the match is a small, illicit tool for preserving a connection to a former life and a future possibility. The butter, which they rub into their skin to keep it soft, allows them to believe they will "some day get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire." The match serves a similar psychological function, but its purpose is more aggressive and final. It is a tool not for preservation but for potential destruction, a fantasy of control in a world where Offred has none. The fact that she must hide it, that its very existence is a transgression, only amplifies its power as a symbol of resistance.

The Match's Narrative Significance: A Symbol of Potential

The match never fulfills its destructive potential within the narrative. Offred does not burn down the house. Instead, it remains a hidden, latent possibility, a symbol of the desperate, imaginative resistance that sustains her. Its significance lies not in its use but in its mere existence as a secret, a piece of her own will that she has managed to carve out from the regime's total control. When the black van finally arrives for her, she reflects on her failure to act, thinking, "I should have taken things into my own hands while I had the chance. I should have stolen a knife from the kitchen, found some way to the sewing scissors." The match, like those other weapons, represents a path not taken, a final, desperate act of self-determination that she considered but never executed. It remains, in the end, a testament to the thin line between survival and self-destruction that defines life in Gilead, a small, silent object that holds the weight of a world of suppressed fury and longing.