paranoid delusion—a perversion of reality. Offred loses touch with identifiable stimuli and fluctuates between testing sanity and denying it. She suspects she is being drugged. To test her grasp of reality, she clutches simple data: “ . . . where I am, and who, and what day it is.”
HOPE and CHARITY—the pillow inscribed with “FAITH” suggests the remaining two abstract nouns of Paul’s triad, found in I Corinthians 13:13, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” In Gilead, there is precious little hope or charity; Offred is left with faith in herself.
a familiar—the owl, cat, toad, or other animal that traditionally guards a witch or wizard.
an Unbaby—the one-in-four child born deformed, “with a pinhead or a snout like a dog’s or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet.” Atwood’s speculative novel suggests that environmental pollution may trigger prenatal malformations, a belief held by agitators against Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam War, and the noxious substances said to have affected the reproductive cells of soldiers during the Persian Gulf War.
exploding atomic power plants—an allusion to the nuclear meltdown on Three Mile Island in March 1979. Ironically, Atwood’s book was published shortly before the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, which occurred in Russia on April 26, 1986.
San Andreas fault—a fluctuating fissure in the subterranean plates that threatens the stability of California.
Jezebels—an allusion to the wicked Phoenician, Baal-worshipping wife of Ahab, Israel’s king. At her instigation, state-ordered persecution cost the lives of prophets. Her power to subvert the worship of Israel’s god with paganism ended in arrest and execution. Her body was devoured by dogs.
past the zero line of replacement—The birthrate has fallen so far that the population no longer grows.
carved on the stone walls of caves, or drawn with a mixture of soot and animal fat—an allusion to prehistoric art, particularly the energetic drawings of Lascaux, a series of isolated chambers in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain, where Neolithic artisans inscribed ritualistic pictures of animals.
a handprint on stone—a reference to the bloody handprints of women who participated in suttee, the sacrifice of Indian wives who followed their husbands’ funeral processions, then leaped or were forced onto their crematory pyres. British rulers outlawed the barbaric Hindu custom in 1829, but it continued to thrive in outlying areas.
Emerge van—A shortened version of emergency, the Emerge van carries doctors and medical machines to be used only if the “emerge”—the birth—proceeds abnormally.
I will greatly multiply thy sorrow—God’s punishment of Eve in Genesis 3:16. The verse concludes with Eve’s loss of autonomy: and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Agent Orange—a defoliant employed by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War to strip the jungle of hiding places for Communist insurgents. Returning soldiers discovered that exposure to the chemical seemingly increased the likelihood of birth defects in their children.
Gyn Ed—education in womanhood, from the Greek gyne, meaning woman.
Birthing Stool—a primitive seat with a hole in the center. By centering a laboring woman upright on the stool, an ancient midwife utilized gravity to guide the infant out of the birth canal.
From each . . . according to her ability; to each according to his needs—a sexist restatement of a quotation of 1875 from the writings of Karl Marx, father of Communism.
Unwoman—any female remanded to the Colonies to serve in clean-up crews removing toxic wastes.
TAKE BACK THE NIGHT—a feminist slogan of the 1980s indicating dismay and revolt at the increase in violence against women, which lessened their freedoms by making them fear the dark.
a circle . . . the stem of a cross—the traditional scientific symbol for woman. The male counterpart is a circle sprouting an arrow. The two symbols derive from the hand-mirror of Venus and the shield and spear of Zeus. Ironically, the male symbol reflects militaristic strength as opposed to the shallow vanity implied by the female symbol.
Aged Primipara—an elderly first-time mother, as opposed to multipara, the medical term for a woman who has borne several children.
matrix—the living tissue in which an embryo grows. The word matrix derives from mater, the Latin word for mother.
crowning—the protrusion from the birth canal of the top of the baby’s head.
smeared with yoghurt—that is, smeared with vernix caseosa, from the Latin for cheesy varnish, the oily protective tissue that coats a newborn.
Computalk—an extension of Compuchek, representative of Gilead’s multiple internal forms of electronic communications.
black patch—an advertising ploy for the Hathaway Shirt Company, whose rakish male model often sports a patch over one eye.
