The Wall
The Wall is the most visible instrument of Gilead's terror, a red-brick perimeter hundreds of years old that once enclosed a university campus and now encloses the headquarters of the Eyes. It is not merely a barrier but a display case: along its top run barbed wire and broken glass set in concrete, and at the main gateway, steel hooks have been set into the brickwork for the purpose of hanging executed bodies. The hooks look like "appliances for the armless" or "steel question marks, upside-down and sideways," and they are the first thing Offred and her shopping partner Ofglen see when they turn their backs on the old church. The Wall is the reason they come to the churchyard at all.
Structure and History
The Wall is hundreds of years old, built of red brick that must once have been "plain but handsome." Now it is fortified with ugly new floodlights mounted on metal posts, barbed wire along the bottom, and broken glass set in concrete along the top. The gates have sentries, and the electronic alarm system makes escape from the inside "next to impossible." The hooks themselves are permanent fixtures, and not all of them are occupied at any given time; the empty hooks are as menacing as the full ones, because they signify potential. Offred notes that the Wall is even more foreboding when it is empty: "When there's someone hanging on it at least you know the worst. But vacant, it is also potential, like a storm approaching."
The Bodies and Their Meanings
The bodies are left hanging for days, sometimes longer, so that as many people as possible will have the chance to see them. Each corpse wears a placard explaining the crime: a drawing of a human fetus for doctors who performed abortions, a purple placard reading "Gender Treachery" for those caught in homosexual acts, an upside-down cross for Catholics, a red J for Jehovah's Witnesses or Jesuits. The heads are covered with white bags, which Offred finds worse than the faces themselves would be: the bags make the men "like dolls on which the faces have not yet been painted," or "scarecrows, which in a way is what they are, since they are meant to scare." The bags also make the heads look like "zeros," and the outlines of features beneath the cloth appear as gray shadows. On one bag, blood has seeped through where the mouth must have been, creating "another mouth, a small red one, like the mouths painted with thick brushes by kindergarten children"—a "child's idea of a smile" that fixes the attention and reminds the viewer that these are not snowmen after all.
The Wall as a Site of Witness and Denial
Offred and Ofglen stop at the Wall every day, as if on signal, and stand and look at the bodies. They are supposed to look: this is what the bodies are there for. The regime intends the spectacle to produce hatred and scorn, but Offred feels "blankness" and a determination not to feel. What she does feel is "partly relief, because none of these men is Luke." The Wall is where she tests the possibility of his death: when she can see the actual bodies and guess from their sizes and shapes that none of them is him, she can believe he is still alive. But she cannot shake the idea that he is inside the Wall, behind the blank red bricks, perhaps in the Library building that now belongs to the Eyes. The Wall thus becomes a site of both terror and hope, a place where the worst is made visible and where its absence becomes a kind of proof.
Seasonal and Political Variations
The bodies are not left hanging as long in summer as in winter, because of the flies and the smell. The regime preaches purity in all things, and the Commanders retain the taste for air sprays. The Wall's population changes with the political winds: one day there are three new bodies—a priest still wearing his black cassock, and two Guardians caught together, their purple placards announcing Gender Treachery. Another day there is only one Catholic, placarded with an upside-down cross, and another sect marked only with a red J. The variety of placards and the frequency of executions make the Wall a kind of public bulletin board for the regime's shifting priorities and paranoias.
Narrative and Thematic Significance
The Wall is the most concentrated symbol of Gilead's power and its dependence on spectacle. It is the place where the state's violence is made visible and where the Handmaids are forced to become witnesses. Offred's repeated visits to the Wall, her careful examination of the bodies, and her refusal to feel what she is supposed to feel constitute a small act of resistance: she will not allow the regime to dictate her emotional response. The Wall also serves as a memento mori, a reminder of the stakes of every transgression, and a point of connection between Offred and Ofglen, who stand together in silence before the bodies, each wondering what the other is thinking. When Ofglen is later replaced by a stranger, Offred tests the new woman by taking her to the Wall, hoping to gauge her loyalties. The Wall is thus not only a place of death but a place of reading—of bodies, of signs, of other people's hearts.
