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Chapter 22
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Testaments, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religious Totalitarianism and Hypocrisy
Gender Roles
Truth, Knowledge, and Power
Shame, Fear, and Repression
Choice
Summary
Analysis
Daisy awakens in the morning in a bedroom. She wanders out into the hall and finds Ada sitting in the living room, drinking coffee with a leathery man in his 50s named Elijah, whom they’d seen at SanctuCare. While Daisy eats cereal, they announce that they have something they need to tell her. Elijah explains that the day before was not her real birthday and Neil and Melanie are not her real parents. Daisy doesn’t believe him, though some part of her wonders if he’s telling the truth and she feels like crying. Daisy asks if her real parents are alive and Elijah tells her that they are, or at least they were yesterday. He explains that she was born in Gilead, though of course she won’t remember. Daisy is Baby Nicole.
The revelation that Daisy is actually Nicole changes the reader’s perception of Baby Nicole as an iconic symbol. Prior to this, the reader was inclined to dehumanize Baby Nicole as an icon in the same way that Gilead and anti-Gilead protesters do, treating her not as a real person but only a symbolic object of resistance or proof of the outside world’s immorality. However, the reader is now forced to regard Nicole as an actual human being, with her own personhood, opinions, and power to make decisions.
Themes
