sect wars—interdenominational battles, which Gilead’s fundamentalists fight against Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, and other religious sects.
gender treachery—betrayal of traditional sex roles—that is, homosexual acts.
All flesh is grass—a biblical warning in Isaiah 40:6-8, noting that “all the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field. . . . The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”
Forgive them, for they know not what they do—Aunt Lydia’s pious platitude, drawn from Luke 23:34, repeats one of Jesus’s final utterances during his crucifixion at Calvary.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum—a botched version of the Latin aphorism Non illegitimi carborundum, meaning “Don’t let the bastards wear you down.”
Amazing grace—a popular Protestant hymn written by reformed slaver John Newton, who established a new life as minister and hymn writer.
I feel so lonely, baby—concluding lines from Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Compudoc—medical computer like the Compuchek, which ascertains patient identity.
snake-twined sword—a version of the caduccus, the traditional symbol of the medical profession.
St. Paul—a founder of Christian worship and writer of epistles to new churches. Paul was notoriously hard on women, particularly the whores of coastal Mediterranean towns, whom he forced to cover their hair as evidence of their departure from seducing sailors and of their conversion to Christianity.
that film, about the women—Offred recalls an unnamed movie picturing female collaborators kneeling in the town square and having their heads shaved in token of their disloyalty.
