116 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret AtwoodThe Testaments
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 26: “LANDFALL”
Chapter 69 Summary: “Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A”
Agnes and Nicole are still in the inflatable. The girls are freezing cold, and the tide is sweeping them toward to sea. Agnes prays silently, for God to get them to the shore safely, or if someone must die, that it be only her. Agnes’s arms are cramping, and she feels herself giving up. Nicole shouts to her to keep rowing. A wave crashes into the boat, and Nicole tells Agnes to row for her life. They finally make it to shore.
Chapter 70 Summary: “Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B”
Nicole is delirious by this point, with her left arm feeling like it is detached from the rest of her. She and Agnes navigate over slippery rocks and seaweed. Nicole and Agnes climb uphill to get away from the waves, and Becka encourages them. Nicole does not remember Becka being in the boat with them, but she is there on the beach.
There is a shout overhead, and someone calls to Agnes and Nicole. The lights move down the hill toward them. Ada is holding one of the lights. Nicole collapses, and Garth picks her up. He makes her smile by telling her that he’d known she would make it. At the top of the hill are television cameras. Someone tells Nicole to smile, and she blacks out. A helicopter airlifts Agnes and Nicole to Campobello Refugee Medical Centre where they treat Nicole’s arm with antibiotics. When Nicole wakes, Agnes is there, as well as Ada, Elijah, and Garth. Agnes says Nicole saved their lives. Elijah says he is proud of them.
Nicole and the document cache are all over the news. Elijah says the source came through, and many of Gilead’s top brass will fall. Nicole asks if Gilead is gone, but it’s just the beginning. Nicole tells Agnes she saw Becka on the beach, but Agnes whispers that she didn’t come.
Nicole sleeps and when she wakes, their mother, Offred, is there. Nicole hugs her mother. Offred smiles and says that Nicole and Agnes must not remember her because they were too young. The girls agree, but say it’s ok and that they will know her soon.
Part 26 Analysis
Nicole and Agnes end their perilous journey in a dramatic and terrifying fashion. Their inflatable boat is at the mercy of the tide and waves. In the writing of this scene, Atwood has separated her characters from safety and guidance. Up to this point, other people have orchestrated Agnes and Nicole’s escape. On the ship, it seems that all is well, and they will make it to Canada, but the girls leave the ship and Atwood places them firmly in their own power, something neither girl has experienced before. Instead of someone saving them, they must save themselves.
Agnes is truly ready to give up and feels she can no longer go on. Nicole, though her arm is swollen beyond the point she can use it and she is beginning to hallucinate, gives Agnes the shouted encouragement she needs to keep rowing. Out of the darkness, amid her fear and despair, Agnes’s sister reaches out a hand and pulls her sister to safety. Once again, Nicole is the younger, but stronger sister. The girls have only just learned that they’re sisters, but the power of tribulation has brought them together and solidified their bond. Nicole notes: “I’m so proud of Agnes—after that night she was really my sister” (397).
What saves Nicole, what pushes her just far enough to make it to the top of the hill, is a hallucination that Becka is there, urging her on. Nicole cannot see Becka in the dark, but she clearly hears her words of encouragement and guidance. Perhaps Becka had come in angel form to help them one last time. It’s significant that Becka’s last words to Agnes were that birds carry the voice, and Nicole hears Becka’s voice in her hallucination.
Agnes and Nicole finally meet their mother. Offred seems happy to be with her daughters, after so many years of separation and worry for their safety, but sad for all that time lost. Nicole says that her Offred “smells right.” The sense of smell is primal, and infants identify their mothers by smell, especially while nursing. Nicole doesn’t recognize her mother’s appearance, apart from what she saw in the picture, but somewhere in her subconscious there is an infant’s memory of her mother’s scent. Likewise, somewhere in Agnes’s subconscious are memories of the mother who read to her and held her and tried to save her by running through the forest.
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By Margaret Atwood
