In her moral dilemma of sexual longing, Offred lusts for Nick as he does for her. From Shakespeare's King Lear (V, ii, 9), she rephrases "Ripeness is all" into "Context is all," a rationalization for the physical yearning, which is matched by Nick's mateless desires arising from state mandates that deny men of status lower than Commander the sexual privileges of a Handmaid. More than lust, Offred is driven by loneliness — a desire to telephone someone, to conjure up a reason to go on living.
The parody of the Lord's Prayer, which takes place by an empty garden just as Jesus prayed alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, verbalizes Offred's feelings of abandonment and despair. Line by line, she restates the sentiments of this central Christian prayer, used at ceremonies and in private devotion as a balanced expression of Christian needs and hopes. Arising from the metaphors of heaven, hell, daily bread, and forgiveness is the specter of the absent chandelier, the anchor to which Offred's predecessor attached her noose. Conjuring like a litany the recurrent line from a tombstone in Gilead's cemetery, Offred tries to remain In Hope, but suffers such isolation that she alters her parody into a sincere cry for spiritual sustenance. The chapter concludes with a plaintive rhetorical question: "How can I keep on living?"
