Handmaids- vocab

Question 1

Pleonasm

Answer 1

Using two or more words of the same meaning
E.g the thin skinny girl

Question 1

Asyndeton

Answer 1

Missing out conjunctions

Question 2

Minor sentence

Answer 2

No main verb

Question 3

Intrusive narrator

Answer 3

A narrator who adresses the reader directly as ‘you’

Question 4

Focaliser

Answer 4

Third person narrator who tells the story through a characters POV

Question 5

Fragmentation

Answer 5

When one narrative event is a catalyst for another unrelated event

Question 6

Analepsis

Answer 6

When a past event is narrated at a point later that its chronological place in a narrative

Question 7

Doubling

Answer 7

When a pair of characters are described as two sides of the same coin

Question 8

Retrospective narrator

Answer 8

When the story being told is not happening at the time the narrator is describing it. The events have happened in the past

Question 9

Homodiegetic narrator

Answer 9

Narrator who is in the story

Question 10

Overt narrator

Answer 10

When a narrator is obvious. They know they are the narrator and they are telling you they are
‘I don’t want to be telling this story’

Question 11

Context: Slavery

Answer 11

Historical context:
- The “children of ham” in Gilead represent the black population and are displaced from society.
- Slavery in the USA was abolished in 1865.
- The Underground Railroad had been used as an escape route in northern USA to Canada, helped by Quakers. It took slaves from safe house to safe house to freedom in Canada. (femaleroad referred to in chpt 38)
- Like the slaves, Handmaids are referred to by their patronymic, they are separated from their birth families, they are tattooed, and should they escape, they are severely punished.

Question 12

Context: Romanian children

Answer 12

• Pieixoto mentions the banning of birth control in Romania as providing precedent for Gilead.
• In 1966, under Ceausescu’s dictatorship, abortion and birth control were banned to increase population.
• Many children were abandoned.
• Atwood uses this real disaster to make the reader reconsider Gileadean laws.

Question 13

Context: The white rose group

Answer 13

Historical context:
- An underground resistance group formed against the Nazis in WW2 made up of students from Munich University.
- Links to the Mayday parade and Underground Femaleroad in Gilead.

Question 14

Context: Polygamy

Answer 14

Religious context:
- Pieixoto refers to the replacement of “serial polygamy” (multiple marriages but only one at a time) for the Old Testament, Mormon practice of “simultaneous polygamy” (multiple marriages at once.
- It is “still practiced in the… state of Utah”, a reference to the real Mormon “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”.

Question 15

Context: Rachel and Leah story

Answer 15

Religious context:
- Found in the epigraph and throughout the novel.
- It is a teaching from the book of Genesis that forms the basis of the relationship between Handmaids, Commanders and Wives.
- It sets up sanctioned adultery within marriage as long as the goal is to have children.

Question 16

Context: the Quakers

Answer 16

Religious context:
- Christians that do not believe in war.
- In WW2 they formed part of the Underground Railroad, as in Gilead they help Moira almost escape in the Underground Femaleroad.

Question 17

Context: The Sufi Proverb

Answer 17

Religious context:
- A form of philosophical religion found in the epigraph.
- It suggests things aren’t acceptable no matter how desperate a situation.
‘In the desert there is no sign that says , Thou shalt not eat stones’

Question 18

Context: Reagan and Thatcher

Answer 18

Political context:
- Both in leadership in 1986 and both strong supporters of conservative politics with very similar ideologies.
- Ronald Reagan made it very difficult for the civil rights movement to pass (the struggle for racial and social justice).

Question 19

Context: Islamic groups and regimes

Answer 19

Political context:
- Atwood visited Afghanistan and Iran so elements of Gilead were made to mirror Sharia Law.
- Similar practices include not allowing women to be educated, ensuring women are escorted, insistence on women being covered and the imposition of public beatings and executions.
- Since publication, Taliban and ISIS fundamentalist groups have gained increasing dominance and threat.
- they film public executions and broadcast them online.
- public executions were known to be carried out in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia

Question 20

Context: common dystopian traits

Answer 20

• Undesirable vision of society
• Dehumanisation and Objectification
• Oppressive environment or government
• Criticism or reflection of society
• Warning to reader
• Attempt or aim to reach utopia
• Individual resistance or rebellion
• Extreme interpretation of laws
• Faceless oppressors (“The Eyes”)
• Paranoid citizens

Question 21

Context: dictatorship

Answer 21

Dystopian feature:
- Also known as authoritarianism.
- The enforcement of a regime through totalitarian leadership.
- Requires complete subservience to the state.

Question 22

Context: theocracy

Answer 22

Dystopian feature:
- Gilead is a state run using the ‘rules’ of religion and using religious teachings as justification for actions.

Question 23

Professor Pieixoto

Answer 23

The Historical Notes:
- An expert in Gileadean studies.
- His name suggests “Pope Pius IX”, a Vatican pope in the 1800s who issued the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.
- His reign saw the church fighting to maintain power during the rise of Napoleon.

Question 24

What did Atwood say about the events in a HMT

Answer 24

“There is noting in the book that hasn’t already happened”.

Question 25

Professor Maryann crescent moon

Answer 25

The Historical Notes:
- Opens the speech by Pieixoto after beginning with formal announcements.
- She emphasises how times have changed as she is a female and native American academic, all of which would be suppressed in Gilead, giving way to the marginalised groups showing how times have changed.

Question 26

Context: declining birth rates

Answer 26

Declining birth rates in 1980s which caused moral panic

Question 27

Who said this:
‘Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.’

Answer 27

Friedan