Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit.
The passage from "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood reflects on the dehumanizing experience of individuals in a controlling society. Comparing people to pearls suggests that they are treated as valuable objects, but this comes with the cost of being molded by another's perception and judgment. The act of defining these individuals by "adjectives" highlights how their identity is stripped away and dictated by authority, leading to a sense of suffering.
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