The Hook

The Hook is the iron implement set into the brickwork of the Wall in Gilead, from which executed bodies are hung by the neck as public spectacles of terror and state power. It transforms the Wall from a historical boundary into an instrument of display, turning corpses into scarecrows meant to frighten the living into submission. The Hook is both a literal object and a symbol of the regime's capacity to reduce human beings to dangling, faceless objects, and it recurs throughout Offred's narrative as a fixed point of horror and a measure of the state's reach.

Design and Location

The Hook is a steel question mark, upside-down and sideways, driven into the red brick of the Wall that surrounds the old university compound. It is not a single hook but a row of them, set into the brickwork for the specific purpose of hanging bodies. Not all of the hooks are occupied at any given time; they stand ready, like appliances for the armless, waiting for the next batch of executions. The Wall itself is hundreds of years old, red brick and once plain but handsome, but it has been fitted with ugly new floodlights mounted on metal posts above it, barbed wire along the bottom, and broken glass set in concrete along the top. The hooks are part of this retrofit, converting a historical landmark into a killing ground. Offred notes that the hooks look like steel question marks, upside-down and sideways, a description that captures their brutal functionality and their eerie, interrogative shape.

Function and Display

The bodies are hung from the hooks by the neck, their hands tied in front of them, their heads covered with white bags. The bags are the worst part, worse than the faces themselves would be, because they make the men like dolls on which the faces have not yet been painted, like scarecrows, which in a way they are, since they are meant to scare. The heads are zeros, heavy with gravity and vacancy. 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 placards hung around their necks explain why they have been executed: a drawing of a human fetus for doctors who performed abortions, a purple placard for Gender Treachery, an upside-down cross for Catholics. The display is a deliberate pedagogical tool, a lesson in the consequences of disobedience. Offred and Ofglen stop at the Wall every day on their shopping walks, as if on signal, and stand and look at the bodies. It doesn't matter if they look; they are supposed to look. This is what they are there for, hanging on the Wall.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The Hook recurs throughout Offred's narrative as a fixed point of horror and a measure of the state's reach. It is the place where she looks for Luke, scanning the bodies to see if any of them is him, and feeling relief when none of them is. It is the place where she sees the bodies of doctors, priests, and gender traitors, each with their own placard, each a reminder of the regime's reach. The Hook is also a site of ambiguity: Offred feels blankness towards the bodies, not hatred and scorn as she is supposed to feel. She must not feel, she tells herself. The Hook is a place where she must make distinctions, where she must be very clear in her own mind. The red smile of blood on one white bag is the same red as the tulips in Serena Joy's garden, but there is no connection. The tulip is not a reason for disbelief in the hanged man, or vice versa. Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that Offred must pick her way, every day and in every way. The Hook is also a site of potential: when it is empty, it is even more foreboding than when it is occupied, because it is potential, like a storm approaching. When Offred can see the bodies, the actual bodies, and can guess from the sizes and shapes that none of them is Luke, she can believe also that he is still alive. The Hook is thus both a place of death and a place of hope, a contradiction that defines her existence in Gilead.