Themes Flashcards
What do the Gileadean revolutionaries do when they take over after terrorism destroys the US government?
They fire all women from their jobs and drain their bank accounts.
How does Luke react when Offred loses her job and her money?
What does this suggest?
He doesn’t seem too furious.
A subtle suggestions that even good men may have embedded misogynistic attitudes, and that Gilead takes these common views to the extreme.
The Commander’s Wife advocated for far-right religious ideas, yet how does she feel in Gilead?
She finds herself unhappily trapped in the world she advocated for.
Gilead institutionalises what towards women?
Sexual violence.
The Ceremony and Jezebel’s
Who does the story critique in terms of political ideology?
Both the religious right and the feminist left.
Gilead is a theocracy. True or False?
True - the government is a combination of church and state.
What is used to justify aspects of Gilead’s society?
Religion, specifically, the Old Testament.
What is Offred’s job as a Handmaid based off of?
The biblical precedent of Rachel and Leah, where fertile servants can carry on adulterous relationships to allow infertile women to have families.
What happens one month before The Ceremony?
The Commander reads from Genesis the same lines that make the book’s epigraph, justifying and moralising the crude intercourse that will take place.
The Handmaid’s Tale is not a criticism of the Bible in itself, but a criticism of what?
The way people and theocracies use the Bible for their own oppressive purposes.
What are the Salvagings and executions supposedly for?
What does Offred know they are truly for?
They are supposedly the penalty for biblical sins like adultery, but Offred knows that they are executed for resisting the government.
What does Offred know about the prater the Aunts play the Handmaid’s in the Rachel and Leah centre?
She knows that they are not the words that exactly appear in the Bible, but she has no way of checking.
Fertility has two purpose for Offred, what are they?
It is the reason for her captivity but also the source of her power.
What does fertility mean to Gilead?
It is its major failing and its hope for the future.
What does Gilead say is the reason for society’s issues with creating viable offspring?
The sexual revolution and birth control, pollution and sexually transmitted diseases.
