Angels are Gilead’s militaristic security force. They wear black uniforms and carry rifles at all times.
Angels Quotes in The Testaments
The The Testaments quotes below are all either spoken by Angels or refer to Angels. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 46
Quotes
The Angel’s real crime was not [smuggling] the lemons, however: he’d been accused of taking bribes from Mayday and aiding several Handmaids in their successful flight across our various borders. But the Commanders did not want this fact publicized: it would give people ideas. The official line is that there were no corrupt Angels and certainly no fleeing Handmaids; for why would one renounce God’s kingdom to plunge into the flaming pit?
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51
Quotes
This is what the Aunts did, I was learning. They recorded. They waited. They used their information to achieve goals known only to themselves. Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets, as the Marthas had always said.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Testaments LitChart as a printable PDF.
Angels Term Timeline in The Testaments
The timeline below shows where the term Angels appears in The Testaments. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...around her bed and protect her soul. This unnerves Agnes, though, especially the thought of Angels with their uniforms and guns watching her as she slept, since some part of her...
(full context)
Chapter 15
...who’d tried to take her across the border through the woods into Canada, but the Angels and the Eyes caught up to her and stole Agnes back.
(full context)
Chapter 37
...the driver agrees. He takes her to the school and drops her off with the Angels who escort her inside, and Agnes tells him to wait for her.
(full context)
...instead, and he is angry at being tricked, but under the watchful eye of Estée’s Angels he can do nothing. As Estée and Agnes drive away from the school in the...
(full context)
Chapter 46: The Ardua Hall Holograph
...nerves, but Lydia declines it for herself. The two men to be executed are an Angel charged with black market dealing (though truly suspected of helping Mayday smuggle Handmaids out of...
(full context)
Elizabeth presides over the Particicutions in the stadium, first for the Angel, then for Dr. Grove. For each, when Elizabeth gives the signal, 70 Handmaids beat each...
(full context)
Chapter 59: Ardua Hall Holograph
In the afternoon, Elizabeth franticly reports to Lydia that Eyes and Angels have invaded Ardua Hall, completely unauthorized. Lydia is greatly alarmed, and as she is striding...
(full context)
Chapter 62: Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B
...the microdot itches and doesn’t seem to be healing well. The car passes through several Angel checkpoints, but the driver, one of Lydia’s men, does all the talking and they get...
(full context)
...bus, they warmly salute Agnes and Nicole in their Pearl Girls uniforms, as do the Angels at the intermittent checkpoints. One of who tells them they’re “very brave, heading into Sodom.”...
(full context)
Chapter 68: The Ardua Hall Holograph
...attack, since there are marks of a struggle in the soil where she was found. Angels have been sent to search for Jade and the eloping plumber in the nearby vicinity,...
(full context)
