three days later
Offred discovers a Latin inscription scratched into a closet wall by the former Offred.
three weeks after
Offred's Handmaid companion disappears; arrival at the a second Ofglen takes her place. Commander's home
May
Offred discovers the Commander snooping near her room. She undergoes a mating ceremony and returns to the sitting room to steal something. Nick interrupts her and informs her that the Commander wants to see her the next night.
the next day
Ofwarren gives birth to Angela. At nine o'clock that evening, Offred goes to the Commander's office and plays Scrabble. Back in her room, she fights hysteria and sleeps in the closet.
the next morning
Cora finds Offred in the closet and fears she has committed suicide.
end of the first year
Offred observes her first Salvaging.
July of Offred's
Offred takes part in a Prayvaganza and joins
third year at the
The Commander at the nightclub, where she Commander's house reunites with Moira for the last time. Moira divulges that Offred's mother, an Unwoman, works in the Colonies. Offred and the Commander take a room, where they have intercourse. After midnight, Offred, returned to the Commander's house, follows Serena through the dark kitchen and out to Nick's quarters for forbidden sex.
high summer
Offred takes part in a Salvaging, where three women are hanged and a man is torn to bits. That afternoon, the second Ofglen is replaced by a new Ofglen, who divulges that her predecessor hanged herself after seeing the van coming for her. Serena stops Offred at the steps and accuses her of sluttish behavior with the Commander.
that night
Nick bursts into Offred's room and urges her to accompany two men in a black van. The Commander objects and is, according to a twenty-second-century scholar's theory, later executed for harboring a subversive (Nick).
middle Gilead
Authorities grow more cautious about liberalism.
June 25, 2195
At the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, a British archivist from Cambridge University, explains how Offred's cassette tapes were unearthed in Bangor, Maine, and pieced together into a puzzling and incomplete retelling of her ordeal.
