Shredder
In the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, a "Shredder" is the colloquial term for a severely deformed or non-viable infant, a child born with such profound physical abnormalities that it is immediately classified as an "Unbaby." The concept is a central terror of the Handmaids' existence, representing the ever-present risk that their coerced pregnancies will produce not a valuable child but a biological catastrophe, a thing to be disposed of without mourning or name. The Shredder is the regime's starkest illustration of its utilitarian approach to human life: a child is only valued if it is "rare and hard to get," and a defective one is simply waste.
Origins and Causes
The prevalence of Shredders is a direct consequence of the environmental degradation that preceded and accompanied Gilead's rise. At the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, the Handmaids are taught that the air became "too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation," and the water "swarmed with toxic molecules." These poisons, they are told, "creep into your body, camp out in your fatty cells," making a woman's very flesh potentially "polluted, dirty as an oily beach, sure death to shore birds and unborn babies." The causes are multiple and systemic: women took medicines and pills, men sprayed trees, cows ate contaminated grass, and "all that souped-up piss flowed into the rivers." Exploding atomic power plants and a mutant strain of syphilis resistant to any mold compounded the crisis. The Handmaids learn that the chances of a Shredder are "one in four," a statistic that hangs over every pregnancy. The regime, however, outlaws any prenatal testing, declaring it pointless since all pregnancies must be carried to term regardless of the outcome.
The Fate of a Shredder
When a Shredder is born, it is not treated as a child. The birth of Janine's second baby, Angela, initially appears to be a triumph, a "keeper" and a "girl." But this joy is brutally reversed. Ofglen later reveals the truth: "It was a shredder after all." The baby that passed through Janine on its way to somewhere else was defective. The infant is not named, mourned, or raised; it is simply taken away, "put somewhere, quickly, away." The exact nature of its disposal is never explicitly stated, but the implication is a swift, unceremonious removal, a bureaucratic erasure. The mother is left with nothing but the trauma of having endured a full-term pregnancy only to produce a child deemed unworthy of life. Janine, who already had a child before Gilead and suffered an eighth-month miscarriage, internalizes this second failure as her own fault, a punishment for her sinfulness.
Narrative and Thematic Significance
The Shredder functions as a powerful narrative device that underscores the precariousness and horror of the Handmaid's condition. It is the ultimate negation of their purpose, transforming their sacred duty into a source of shame and loss. The fear of producing a Shredder is a constant, unspoken pressure that drives the Handmaids' desperate hope for a normal child, a hope that is the only thing standing between them and the despair of being declared an "Unwoman" and shipped to the Colonies. The concept also serves as a damning indictment of the regime's hypocrisy: Gilead claims to value life above all, yet it has created a system where a child can be instantly dehumanized and discarded based on its physical form. The Shredder is not a tragedy of nature but a product of the very world Gilead helped create, a world of pollution and radiation that the regime's own policies of industrial and military control have exacerbated. It is a silent, horrifying counterpoint to the regime's public celebrations of fertility and its sanctimonious proclamations about the sanctity of unborn life.
