Setting: Biblical Allusion

2. Setting: Biblical Allusion • Gilead is the name of two places and three people in the Bible • Gilead was a mountainous region east of the Jordan River divided among the tribes of Gad and Manasseh, and situated in modern-day Jordan. (Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Psalms) • In Hebrew, Gilead can also mean a memorial site • Do you see some irony in the naming of this new society “Gilead?” • The Hebrew Bible repeatedly mentions a "balm in Gilead" or "balm of Gilead", references and symbolism which have appeared repeatedly in Western culture • In Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," the speaker asks the spectral bird: “Is there balm in Gilead? —tell me—tell me, I implore!” • In The Handmaid's Tale, the United States has been replaced by a theocratic totalitarian nation. One character sings the spiritual, substituting “balm” with “bomb.”

3. Make comparisons between Miller’s The Crucible and TheHMT.

4. Author’s Craft: Writing Style • In your table groups, discuss and describe Atwood’s writing style, the mood she creates, and the attitude her tone reflects. • Point of view? Perspective? • Compare and contrast her writing with that of Woolf and Schlink. • Select one or two sentences from the first three chapters that had an effect on you.

5. Cultural Catylist • Atavism: (n) a tendency to revert to ancestral type • a:  recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination • b:  recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity <architectural atavism> • 2:  one that manifests atavism :throwback, vintage • — at·a·vis·ticadjective • — at·a·vis·ti·cal·lyadverb • In The Handmaid's Tale, the United States has been replaced by a theocratic totalitarian nation.

6. Gilead’s Caste System • Men: • Commanders of the Faithful • Eyes • Angels • Soldiers—Guardians of the Faith • Gender Traitors • Un-Persons: • Women • Men • Babies • Women: • Wives • Handmaids • Daughters • Marthas • Aunts • Econowives

9. Chapter 1: Discussion Questions • Read the first sentence. What can you tell about the period just from this sentence? • People generally sleep in gymnasiums only in emergencies, after disasters. But this "had once" been a gymnasium, which implies that it was converted to its present use a long time ago. Some major change has taken place, probably not for the good. • A "palimpsest" was created when a medieval scribe tried to scrape clean a parchment in order to reuse it. Sometimes the scraping process was not complete enough to obliterate all traces of the original text, which could be read faintly underneath the new one. • What is suggested by the fact that the immediate supervisors of the girls are women but these women are not allowed guns? • What is suggested by the fact that the girls have to read lips to learn each others' names?

10. Chapter 2: Discussion Questions • The setting has shifted. It is now much later. • What is the mood created by the narrator’s observation that “they've removed anything you could tie a rope to?” • What is implied by the sentence, “Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep?” • “Ladies in reduced circumstances” is a 19th-century expression usually applied to impoverished widows. How does the narrator pun on it? • In the gospels, Martha was one of two sisters. She devoted herself to housework while her sister Mary sat and listened to Jesus. • The irony here is that Jesus praised Mary, not Martha; but the patriarchy chose Martha as the ideal. • What is suggested by the existence of “Colonies” where “Unwomen” live? • What are the crimes the Martha's gossip about in their “private conversations?”

11. Chapter 1-3: Discussion Questions • What evidence is there that the revolution which inaugurated this bizarre society is relatively recent? • What questions have arisen for you about this novel? • What is un-Christian about this society? • What is suggested by the existence of “Colonies” where “Unwomen” live? • What are the crimes the Martha's gossip about in their “private conversations?” • Describe the relationship between Serena Joy and Offred. • Why does Aunt Lydia say that being a handmaid is a “position of honor”? • What is suggested by the fact that the immediate supervisors of the girls are women but these women are not allowed guns? • What is suggested by the fact that the girls have to read lips to learn each others' names?

12. Serena Joy (p. 15) alludes to 70s’ evangelist Tammy Fay Bakker. • American televangelist Tammy Messner married fellow devout Christian Jim Bakker, and together they hosted television ministry shows in the 1960s and '70s, including The 700 Club and the Praise the Lord Club. • In 1980, scandal ensued when Jim Bakker was caught having an affair with his church secretary, Jessica Hahn. Numerous other affairs surfaced, and the Bakkers fell from grace. • In 1989, Jim Bakker was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. • During the tumultuous six-week trial, the federal government succeeded in proving that Jim solicited a total of $158 million from followers of the PTL ($3.7 million of which he used for personal means). He was given a 45-year prison sentence, which was later reduced to six years. Jim Bakker was paroled in 1994, and has since re-established himself as a minister. • Around the same time, Tammy filed for divorce, which was finalized in 1992. Afterward, she remarried, worked on a short-lived TV show and published an autobiography. Tammy succumbed to lung cancer on July 20, 2007, at her home in Missouri.