Placard

The Placard is a sign hung around the neck of an executed person displayed on the Wall in Gilead, specifying the crime for which they were hanged. It functions as a tool of state terror, a public spectacle of retroactive justice, and a semiotic marker that the narrator, Offred, must learn to read and resist.

Appearance and Function

The placards are hung around the necks of the bodies that are displayed on the Wall, the red-brick barrier that surrounds the old university. Each placard shows why the person has been executed. When Offred and her shopping partner Ofglen first visit the Wall, six bodies are hanging, and each man wears a white coat, like a doctor or scientist. Around each neck is a placard bearing a drawing of a human fetus. These men were doctors, Offred realizes, who performed abortions in the time before, when such procedures were legal. The placard thus marks them as "Angel makers" whose crimes are retroactive: what was legal at the time is now punishable by death. The placard is not merely an identifier; it is a pedagogical tool, meant to teach the watching populace what offenses are now capital. Offred notes that the bodies are left hanging for days, until a new batch replaces them, so that as many people as possible will have the chance to see them. The placard is part of this display, a label that turns a corpse into a lesson.

Variations and Meanings

The placards are not uniform; they vary to indicate different categories of transgression. On a later walk, Offred sees three new bodies. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock that was put on him for the trial, though priests had abandoned such garments years ago during the sect wars. The two others have purple placards hung around their necks that read "Gender Treachery." Their bodies still wear the uniforms of the Guardians, indicating they were caught together, perhaps in a barracks or a shower. The purple color and the specific charge mark a different kind of crime—homosexual conduct—which is punished as severely as abortion. The placard system thus creates a visual taxonomy of sin, allowing any passerby to instantly categorize the executed and absorb the regime's hierarchy of offenses. Offred reads these signs with a practiced eye, understanding that the placard is a condensed narrative of a life and a death.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The placard is a key element in the regime's theater of terror, a device that transforms individual lives into cautionary tales. Offred's act of reading the placards is itself a form of resistance, a refusal to accept the official interpretation at face value. When she sees the doctors' placards, she does not feel the prescribed hatred and scorn; instead, she feels blankness and a need to make distinctions. She notes that the red of the smile of blood on one white bag is the same red as the tulips in Serena Joy's garden, but she insists there is no connection between them. This effort to keep objects separate, to refuse the symbolic equivalence the regime tries to impose, is a way of maintaining her own sanity. The placard is also a source of cruel hope: each time Offred sees a body on the Wall, she checks to see if it is Luke, and when it is not, she feels relief. The placard, by naming the crime, also allows her to rule out certain possibilities. The system of placards, with its fetus drawings and purple labels, is a brutal semiotics that Offred must navigate daily, picking her way through a field of valid objects that the regime has loaded with meaning.