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Notes -
A few comments
•The Sons of Jacob definitely aren’t supposed to be a mainline Christian denomination. The name “Jesus” is pointedly never mentioned by anyone in Gilead, ever, nor is anything from the New Testament. The SoJ have difficulty controlling the Deep South due to Baptist insurgents, which would imply that many hardline denominations are not on board. Additionally, book Gilead has a strong racial apartheid element, with the “Sons of Ham” being confined to South Africa style Zanzibar-stans. This would seem to imply the SoJ are a strain of Dominionist weirdos and not mainline Christians. This was changed in the tv show to make the SoJ racially egalitarian, which honestly probably tracks better with radical Christian groups today. Many of the lower level political commissars of Gilead are former rad-fems, which also doesn’t really track with any 80s right wing or religious movement (though it seems oddly prescient today).
•It seems to be implied the fertility crisis caused massive social pressure which allowed the SoJ to seize power, and that the handmaids and the rest of the social structure are more of a semi-pragmatic measure to deal with that, and not just some stupid LARP. It annoys me that in the show Canada seems to be able to just be a normal liberal brunchtopia in the face of an existential demographic crisis.
•I think post-script seemingly taking place after the fall of the regime is an homage to Orwell’s 1984 with the Newspeak dictionary at the end.
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