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They can’t lock them all up, it makes no sense.
The voice says: Just try it on for size, honey. Remember, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need to own the place so they can’t take it from you. The only way you’re safe, honeybun, is if you own it.
power as a way to find protection from harm. Not as a positive way to unify them.
It is a gift. Who is to say it does not come from God?
free indirect discourse in this chapter... who is saying this?
Allie laughs, in spite of herself. It’s been a while since someone last made her laugh. Since she last laughed without deciding beforehand that laughing was the smart thing to do. She just had an idea, says the voice. It just popped into her head. She came looking for you. I told you a soldier would come. Yeah, says Allie. Shut up for a minute, OK?
The voice in Allie’s head has been quiet these past few days. Quieter than she remembers it being in years. Something about being here, these summer days, knowing that Roxy’s here and she could kill anyone stone dead; something about that has made it all go quiet.
Mother Eve records a message to go out over the footage. She says, “I have not come to tell you to give up a single strand of your belief. I am not here to convert you. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, if you are of any faith or none at all, God does not want you to change your practice.” She pauses. She knows this is not what they’re expecting to hear. “God loves all of us,” she says, “and She wants us to know that She has changed Her garment merely. She is beyond female and male, She is beyond human understanding. But She calls your attention to that which you have forgotten.
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Carlyle conceptualizing a secular conversions, The Tailor Re-Tailored, idea that the power of God manifests in certain "clothing" of different religions that wear out over time and you need to get new ones.
She wants you to bless her war, says the voice. Tricky. Tricky if she loses, says Allie in her heart. I thought you wanted to be safe, says the voice. You told me I couldn’t be safe unless I owned the place, says Allie in her heart. And I told you that you couldn’t get there from here, says the voice. Whose side are you on, anyway? says Allie.
tension btwn Allie and the voice--how does their relationship change over time?
Her eyelids flutter as they lift the thing out of her. She knows she’s seeing now, not just imagining. She sees it in front of her, the strand of meat that was the thing that made her work. It’s jumping and squirming because it wants to get back inside her. She wants it there too. Her own self.
identification of self with the skein
“Don’t worry,” they seem to say. “This can’t last long, but while it does we’ll help you out.”
luke says the same thing in A Handmaid's Tale
Roxy finds it there in among the blood and mush. Her own self, her beating heart, the part of her that powered all the rest. A thin and rotting piece of gristle.
identifying self with the skein again
There’s never been a right choice, honeybun. The whole idea that there are two things and you have to choose is the problem.
shades of the fortunate fall
When a person has taken a wrong turn, must she not retrace her steps, is that not wise? After all, we’ve done it before. We can do it again. Different this time, better this time. Dismantle the old house and begin again.
Who is the "we"? Is this one narrator, one person speaking for women as a whole? Instead of referring to "mankind", it's a feminized omniscience.
