The Handmaid's Tale

The women could not take it anymore. Driven insane from waiting so long for water to fall, the women were thinking about leaving. They had an important choice to make, stay in the village they lived in their entire lives or go somewhere else in hope of survival. They left the shade of the hut and walked across the dry, dusty ground. They went to inspect the ground to see if the corn and watermelon seeds they had planted had shown any sign of life. They wanted to cry when they saw that the seeds had not grown at all, but there were no tears coming from their eyes. They beat against the powdery ground in frustration. They went back to the hut to inform the rest of the family of the lack a progress.
When they got back they told Ramadi the unfortunate,

but somewhat expected news. They told him that they should all pack up the little that they still had and go and search for a better place to live. Ramadi talked to Mokgobja about what the women had told him. They talked for several hours, deliberating on whether or not to leave. They both agreed that it was time to leave. Ramadi gathered the family and informed them on what they decided. They went and collected the two remaining goats and the handfuls of belongings and headed away from their village.
The family walked for hours in the blazing heat, hoping to find another place where there showed signs of rain. As they walked along, everyone was getting more and more tired and dehydrated. They hoped that they would find some water soon or else it could be fatal. They stopped and dug deep into the dry ground, hoping to find something to drink. They searched and searched, but they could not find any water. They looked around for some sort of shelter, but there was none in sight. They all collapsed to the ground and fell asleep. This was a sleep that none of them would ever wake up from.
I used several different descriptive, associative and interpretive materials from the first part of the story to write the second part of the story. I made the women come up with the idea of leaving their village because I interpreted the part of the story where it says, “It was the women of the family who finally broke down under the strain of waiting for rain.” This quote really meant that the women were done with just sitting there dealing with the fact that they were not getting lucky enough to have it rain. I described the status of the ground the way I did because earlier in the story it said, “the ground turned a powdery black and white… the air was so dry and moister-free that it burned the skin.” This quote shows how the ground was affected by the lack of rain. I can somewhat relate to these conditions. The way they are described reminds me of the long, hot, dry summer days when I had soccer games and practices that lasted for several hours. I made it so that the family stopped and dug in the ground for water because in the first part of the story it said, “people made little rest camps for themselves and dug shallow wells to quench their thirst.” This description reminds me of a TV show that I watched where a guy was stuck somewhere in Africa and dug a deep hole in the ground and was able to find water. I made it so the family passed away in the end of the story because of the description of how some people hung themselves. In the first part of the story it said, “At the beginning of that summer, a number of men just went out of their homes and hung themselves to death from trees.” This quote shows how many people who were affected by the drought decided that they could not deal with it any longer and they killed themselves.