this reading has grown on me since i read it, i like it, i been chewing on the implication that you could extend this to the ancestors, how the context where the spiral happens is a direct consequence of the tragedy of the ancestors failing to do a revolution, a tragedy where two of the opposing forces to the revolution (HIC and the handmaid) are the ancestors of two of the people who end up dead because of this, childs ending up dead because of ideas and (coerced) actions of their own parents; classic tragedy