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Did I weep? Yes: tears came out of my two visible eyes, my moist weeping human eyes. But I had a third eye, in the middle of my forehead. I could feel it: it was cold, like a stone. It did not weep: it saw. And behind it someone was thinking: I will get you back for this. I don’t care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it.

Aunt Lydia records these words in Part IX, as part of her account of her experience of the coup that established Gilead. Following her arrest, and after seven days of lockdown in a sports stadium, men came for Aunt Lydia and brought her before one of the men who led the coup: Commander Judd. The Commander invited Aunt Lydia to cooperate with the new regime, and when she declined, he sentenced her to several days of solitary confinement in the “Thank Tank.” Doused in darkness and berated with sounds of violence against other women, Aunt Lydia grew psychologically disoriented. At some point, men entered her cell and subjected her to violent abuse. They came to her cell two more times, beating her and electrocuting her with a taser. Alone, hungry, in excruciating pain, and not knowing if or when her torments would end, Aunt Lydia broke down.

In this quotation, Aunt Lydia confesses that her experience in the Thank Tank brought her to a low point. As someone who grew up in a poor, rural community with uneducated parents, Aunt Lydia had to fight her way into a better life. She demonstrated her grit by putting herself through law school, developing into a reputation as a skilled lawyer, and eventually becoming a judge. But the degradation she experienced in the first weeks after the coup profoundly threatened her spirit. Importantly, however, the violence that men perpetrated against her did not completely break her. Even though tears spilled from her “two visible eyes,” Aunt Lydia maintains that she possessed a “third eye” gifted with an ability to see clearly through the crisis of the moment. This third eye, which symbolizes Aunt Lydia’s vast store of personal strength and fortitude, allowed her to discover a seed of resistance that remained hidden beneath the pain and horror she was experiencing. In this moment Aunt Lydia committed to nurturing this seed of resistance for as long as it took to get her revenge. The rest of her manuscript will narrate how her efforts came to bear fruit.

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