fetish—a bizarre or perverse psychological obsession—such as a focus on hair, shoes, revealing lingerie, or body odor—to relieve an erotic need.
something Renaissance about the pose—models depicting bold, selfconfident attitudes,
We don’t seem to have much in common—a humorous twist on a cliche common to the seductive line of seducers in novels, movies, and television soap operas
Colonies—those areas beyond Gilead that are permeated with radioactive toxins. Clean-up crews consist of incorrigibles, old or sterile women, and other expendable citizens not suited to the rigid caste system of a theocracy or the need for state breeders.
Loaves and Fishes—a food store named for Christ’s miracle described in Matthew 14:17 of expanding five loaves and two fish to feed a multitude of hungry people.
Daily Bread—a reference to a line from the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6-11.
Women’s Salvagings—a public execution presided over and carried out by women, which is acted out in Chapter 14.
Romanesque—architecture that emphasizes rounded arches and vaults, piers, and arcades.
Soul Scrolls—an automated print shop that publishes prayers “for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin.”
Holy Rollers—a derisive term applied to energetic religious groups, primarily Pentecostal, who dance, shout, embrace, testify, and speak gibberish during spiritual ecstasy.
Tibetan prayer wheels—cylinders containing written prayers used by devout Buddhists as an adjunct to worship.
Identipasses—in-town visas; an unconstitutional restriction on personal freedom.
Pornomarts—distributors of pornography.
Feels on Wheels vans and Bun-Die Buggies—vehicles carrying prostitution to the streets.
Compunumber—a credit registration number, a means by which the religious right controls Gilead’s apathetic citizens.
an F on it instead of an M—letters denoting gender of cardholders.
Ours is not to reason why—a paraphrase of a line from Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” a way poem describing the pointless deaths of soldiers dispatched into battle against impossible odds.
paranoid—excessively suspicious or mistrustful.
semaphore—a coded system of flag movements used at sea for ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore communication.
Hard Times—a key novel by Charles Dickens depicting the blatant human exploitation common during England’s Industrial Revolution.
Pen is Envy—a pun on “penis envy,” a concept of Sigmund Freud to account for negative behavior that women express against men.
sum es est, sumus estis sunt—a lesson in beginning Latin, which translates, “I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, they are.”
