The Handmaid's Tale, #2
The Testaments
by Margaret Atwood
Contents
64
Overview
Nicole and Agnes are delivered to a riverside dock and transferred to a quiet motorboat on the Penobscot River. Guided by a young boatman who dismisses the Eyes’ reach, they head toward a larger vessel, the Nellie J. Banks. Nicole feels she is going home while Agnes faces the unknown.
Summary
Through a silent, rainy night drive, Nicole stays awake while Agnes sleeps. Their paid driver leaves them at a private dock, brusquely unloading their new backpacks before departing, treating them as cargo. A young-sounding man in a hooded waterproof calls to them from a waiting motorboat.
Nicole wakes Agnes, and they board carefully in the dark, guided to the middle seat. The boat’s electric motor carries them quietly onto the Penobscot River under a crescent moon. Agnes is struck by the beauty of the moonlit water, while Nicole feels suddenly older and more experienced, sensing that she is heading home as Agnes approaches a foreign world.
Worried about exposure, Nicole asks about being seen and reported to the Eyes. The boatman reassures her that locals do not talk to Gilead’s spies and jokes that he is merely a “delivery boy,” moving people and things across arbitrary borders.
As mist rises and the river widens, the shores blur. Finally, the boatman points out a dark silhouette on the water: the Nellie J. Banks, their waiting ship and “ticket to paradise,” signaling the next stage of their escape.
Who Appears
- Nicole (Baby Nicole)Narrator; cautious but determined, questions risks, feels she is heading home.
- Agnes JemimaAwakens for the transfer; awed by the river’s beauty; entering an unknown world.
- BoatmanYoung-sounding smuggler; guides them quietly down the Penobscot to the ship.
- Truck driverTaciturn courier who drops them at the dock and departs immediately.