Thank Tank Imprisonment

The Thank Tank Imprisonment marks the decisive turning point in Aunt Lydia's transformation from a captured judge into a collaborator with the nascent Gilead regime. After her arrest and a period in the stadium, she is taken to a repurposed police station and thrown into a dark isolation cell approximately four paces by four. This cell, called the Thank Tank, has a bed shelf without a mattress and a bucket for human waste that still contains remnants from previous occupants, filling the space with a foul smell. The light socket is not live, so any illumination comes only from the corridor outside through a slot used for delivering sandwiches. Aunt Lydia is left to gnaw her food in the dark, a deliberate plan to break her will.

Conditions of Solitary Confinement

Aunt Lydia is held in the Thank Tank for an unknown length of time, though she later judges it could not have been very long based on the length of her fingernails when she is brought out. Time, however, becomes distorted in the dark isolation: it feels longer, and she loses the distinction between sleep and wakefulness. She is visited by cockroaches, whose tiny feet tiptoe across her face tenderly, and after a while she welcomes any kind of touch. The absence of other people rapidly erodes her sense of self; she reflects that one person alone is not a full person, and that she risks becoming no person at all. Periodically, an eye views her through the sliding shutter, and she hears screams, shrieks, prolonged moaning, and breathy gasps that sound sexual from nearby cells, though she cannot tell whether these noises are real or recordings intended to shatter her nerves.

Physical Torture and Psychological Breaking

On three separate occasions—three being a magic number—three men enter her cell without warning, shine a glaring light into her blinking eyes, throw her onto the floor, and administer a precise kicking along with other attentions involving Tasers. She is not raped, she speculates, because she is already too old and tough for that purpose, or because her captors pride themselves on high moral standards, though she doubts this. During these beatings, tears come from her eyes, but she feels a third eye in the middle of her forehead that is cold like a stone and does not weep; behind it, someone is thinking, "I will get you back for this. I don't care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it." This internal resolve marks the birth of her strategic, vengeful consciousness.

The Choice and Its Aftermath

After an indefinite period, the door to her cell clangs open, light floods in, and two black uniforms haul her out. She is a shambling wreck, even smellier than before, and is marched or dragged to an air-conditioned van. She is taken to a hotel—a repurposed Holiday Inn—where she is given three days of rest and recuperation: a tray with orange juice, a banana, a green salad, and poached salmon; a bed with sheets; several towels; a shower; and a beautiful ceramic toilet. She falls to her knees in heartfelt prayer, though to whom or what she cannot say. After eating all the food, she spends hours taking showers, inspecting her healing abrasions and yellowing bruises, and feeling a newfound tenderness for her body. On the third morning, she wakes in an improved state of coherence and finds a fresh garment laid out for her: a brown sackcloth-like robe, the same kind worn by the female shooters she had seen in the stadium. She puts it on, understanding that she has been given a choice and has made it. Commander Judd later tells her that her rifle contained a blank, but the ordeal has already sealed her pact with the regime.