Latin Textbook
The Latin textbook that sits on a high shelf in the Commander's study is a seemingly innocuous object—a dog-eared, inky schoolbook from another century—yet it holds the key to one of the most resonant messages in Offred's world. It is the source of the scratched graffiti "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum," the phrase the previous Handmaid left on the closet wall and that Offred has repeated to herself like a prayer. When Offred finally asks the Commander to translate it, he retrieves this very textbook, and the moment transforms the phrase from a talisman of resistance into a piece of schoolboy humor, revealing both the fragility of her hope and the banality of the power that surrounds her.
Discovery and Translation
Offred first encounters the Latin textbook during one of her secret visits to the Commander's study. Having built up a repertoire of gestures and familiarities with him, she ventures to ask about the phrase she has been carrying in her head. The Commander, after a moment of hesitation, takes down a book from his shelves—not the dictionary she expected, but an old, dog-eared textbook. He lays it open on the desk, and Offred sees a black-and-white photo of the Venus de Milo, defaced with a mustache, a black brassiere, and clumsily drawn armpit hair. On the opposite page, a Latin conjugation is printed, and in the margin, written in the same ink as the Venus's hair, is the very phrase: "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum."
The Joke Revealed
The Commander laughs, blushing, and explains that the phrase is not real Latin but a joke from his school days. It means, "Don't let the bastards grind you down." He shows Offred other marginalia from the same era—"pirn pis pit, pimus pistis pants" and "Cim, cis, cit"—reminiscing about the cleverness of schoolboys. For a moment, Offred almost likes him, seeing the freckled, cowlicked boy he once was. But the revelation is devastating: the phrase she had invested with the weight of a secret code, a command from a kindred spirit, is merely a prank. The previous Handmaid must have learned it in this very room, during similar confidences with the Commander, making Offred not the first to enter his silence and play children's word games with him.
Connection to the Previous Handmaid
The textbook thus becomes a bridge between Offred and the woman who came before her. When Offred asks what happened to that woman, the Commander replies, almost thoughtfully, "She hanged herself." He adds that Serena Joy found out, which explains why the chandelier was removed from Offred's room. The textbook, then, is not just a source of a joke; it is a relic of a failed intimacy, a warning of the fate that awaits those who cross the line between duty and desire. Offred realizes that the previous Handmaid's message, far from being a prayer or a command, was a sad graffiti, scrawled and abandoned.
Significance
The Latin textbook encapsulates the central irony of Offred's relationship with the Commander. What she had taken for a secret language of resistance is, in his hands, a nostalgic trifle, a piece of his own past that he can share or withhold at will. The book is a symbol of the power he holds over knowledge and interpretation, and of the way even the most desperate acts of defiance can be reduced to a schoolboy's joke. Yet the phrase itself, once its meaning is known, does not lose all its power. It becomes, instead, a more complex artifact: a reminder that hope can be built on fragile foundations, and that even a joke can carry the weight of survival when it is the only thing left to hold on to.
