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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Testaments, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religious Totalitarianism and Hypocrisy
Gender Roles
Truth, Knowledge, and Power
Shame, Fear, and Repression
Choice
Summary
Analysis
Nicole tries to grapple with what Elijah just revealed about her true identity. She feels as if her whole self and history has just been wiped away. She wishes it all wasn’t true. Elijah and Ada continue to explain that although Nicole’s biological father isn’t a Commander, her legal father is, according to Gilead, so they have a legal claim to her as long as she’s underage—and they’d stoop to illegal measures as well. Nicole realizes that this is why Neil and Melanie didn’t want her at the march, where she’d be seen on the news, and feels guilty for their deaths, though Ada tells her that Gilead had already targeted The Clothes Hound days before. Elijah leaves to make arrangements and find another car.
Once again, Gilead’s use of illegal measures and even kidnapping demonstrates that they are not a bastion of moral purity as they claim to be, but a conniving authoritarian state. Nicole’s earlier feeling that Baby Nicole was simply treated like a football seems to lend to her feeling that her identity has been wiped away. Before, she was Daisy, with Daisy’s thoughts and lived experiences. Now, she is simply Nicole, the icon who was never seen as a person unto herself, but only a contested symbol between two opposing sides.
Themes
Elijah returns a few hours later with George, the street man of whom Nicole used to be afraid. George saw the Eyes in The Clothes Hound with Neil and Melanie for several hours before they marched them out to the car and put the bomb in there with them. George doesn’t know if Neil and Melanie were tortured or gave up information, so they must move again. Ada takes Nicole downstairs to another apartment, which belongs to someone named Garth, and warns Nicole that she might not like what’s coming next.
George’s role as a Mayday operative suggests that Neil and Melanie’s network was extensive and surrounded Nicole’s life. The fact that Ada and Nicole have to hide like fugitives in their own country, which opposes Gilead’s interference, suggests that Gilead’s reach in Canada is disturbingly and powerful.
Themes
