"I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born" (66).
The demand made of the handmaids is one that is practically impossible to pull off. They have to change their entire way of being, until they become completely emotionless, as if they were made of a machine. In this quote, Atwood uses Offred's internal struggle to characterize the attempt that handmaids must all go through. What the Eyes of God do not realize in all this killing of emotion, is that no matter how hard one tries to push down and restrain it, at some point something will snap, and the results will be catastrophic.
nice language there -- "In this quote, Atwood uses Offred's internal struggle to characterize the attempt that handmaids must all go through."
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