Message on Wall
The Message on Wall is a scratched Latin phrase, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum," discovered by Offred in the darkest corner of her cupboard floor three days after she was moved into the room. It is written in tiny, fresh-looking script, made with a pin or a fingernail, and it is forbidden—a piece of writing in a world where writing is illegal for Handmaids. Offred does not know what it means or even what language it is in, but she recognizes it immediately as a message, intended for whoever came next. The discovery gives her a small joy and a sense of communion with the unknown woman who left it, whom she imagines as about her own age, freckled, quirky, and resourceful—she turns her into Moira as Moira was in college.
Discovery and Meaning
Offred finds the message on the third day of exploring her room, a deliberate, slow examination she divides into sections to make it last. She saves the cupboard for last, carefully inspecting the door, the walls with their brass hooks, and the rod with its plastic hangers. Kneeling to examine the floor, she finds the writing in the corner where the darkest shadow falls. The phrase is "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." She tries it out on Rita, asking about the woman who stayed in the room before her. Rita's grudging response—"Which one?"—reveals that there have been more than one, and that some have not stayed their full two-year posting. When Offred describes the woman as "the lively one" with freckles, Rita accepts the lie that Offred knew her before and says only, "She didn't work out." Offred is left like a child, not to be told what happened.
Revelation and Recontextualization
Months later, during one of her secret Scrabble games with the Commander, Offred asks him about the phrase. She prints it carefully on his score pad, feeling the sensuous power of the pen between her fingers. The Commander laughs and tells her it is not real Latin but a joke from his schoolboy days. He shows her an old Latin textbook from his shelves, dog-eared and inky, with the same phrase scrawled in the margin next to a conjugation. He translates it: "Don't let the bastards grind you down." Offred realizes that the previous Handmaid must have learned it here, in this room, during similar confidences with the Commander. She asks what happened to her. The Commander answers, "She hanged herself. That's why we had the light fixture removed. In your room." He adds, "Serena found out," as if that explains it. Offred understands that the woman's death is the reason for the shatterproof window and the missing chandelier, and that Cora, who found her, is the reason she screamed when she found Offred asleep on the floor of the cupboard.
Significance and Legacy
The message becomes Offred's private prayer, repeated silently during the Ceremony and in moments of despair. She traces the scratched writing with her fingers in the dark, as if it were a code in Braille. After the Commander reveals its meaning, it sounds in her head less like a prayer and more like a command, though she finds it useless—"There's no way out of here." Yet the message also represents a link to the woman who came before, a woman Offred now knows died in this very room. The phrase, a piece of schoolboy humor, carries the weight of that woman's fate and the possibility of Offred's own. It is a reminder that she is not alone in this room, that there were always two of them. The message, scratched with a pin or a fingernail, survives as a testament to a small act of defiance, a taboo piece of writing that made it through to at least one other person.
