The Handmaid's Tale

This belongs to Kaila.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum“- mock Latin for “don’t let the bastards grind you down”.
From The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

This is Laina’s tattoo.

This tattoo is a quote from “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” is fake Latin for “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” The tattoo is in my best friend’s handwriting.

This tattoo belongs to Sherrie.

My tattoo is from the book The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I first read this book when mother gave it to me when I was 12 or 13, and I fell in love with it. The significance of the quote to me is that the entire book reflects a lot of the ignorance of society today and what happens when people don’t ask questions and aren’t allowed to think for themselves. How eventually people just won’t know any better. The book serves as a warning of loss of freedom and what could happen to people, namely women. I just find it interesting.

“Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing baseball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves? Even though some of them are no more than fourteen – Start them soon is the policy, there’s not a moment to be lost – still they’ll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won’t. They’ll always have been white, in groups of girls; they’ll always have been silent.”

– Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale