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
Three days later, someone breaks into The Clothes Hound. They don’t take any money but do steal one of Neil’s old cameras, which he frets about nervously. That evening, Daisy finds Neil and Melanie watching the news, which they never do. The report is about a Pearl Girl named Aunt Adrianna who was found in a hotel. Her death appears to have been a suicide. Neil and Melanie commiserate for the dead girl, which Daisy can’t understand, even though Aunt Adrianna was often at their store with another girl named Aunt Sally.
Once again, Daisy demonstrates the common belief that anyone who participates or supports a tyrannical regime must themselves be evil or monstrous. Neil and Melanie’s sadness for Aunt Adrianna’s death suggests they understand that such a death is always a tragedy, and that just because she worked for Gilead does not necessarily mean that she herself was a wicked person.
Themes
The morning of her birthday, Daisy comes down from her bedroom to find empty plates and crumbs on the table—remnants from one of her parents’ activist meetings the night before. Melanie wishes her a happy birthday. At school, a few friends wish her happy birthday as well, and the day passes slowly. Daisy feels disappointed that this day feels like any other and that she’s still never been on a date. At the end of the day, instead of Melanie arriving to pick her up, Ada is there instead and tells her to get in the car with her; Neil and Melanie were murdered by a car bomb at The Clothes Hound. Daisy is in shock and does not know how to react or process the news.
Neil and Melanie’s mysterious murder—by a bombing, no less—confirms that there was much that they concealed from Daisy about their lives, which would thus suggest that people are often far more complex and dynamic than them may seem on the surface, including people from Gilead or any such oppressive regime. Although Daisy does not really know Ada, in the wake of Daisy’s parents’ death, Ada presents herself as a sort of substitute parent figure.
Themes
