I have a horrible memory.. if I don't write down my thoughts right away they're gone.
The opposite or "reverse" of how GG's likes it -- they don't write or keep any written forms of communication.

"We wrote on slates, and they had to be wiped off at the end of each day because the Gardeners said you couldn't leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. Anyways, paper was sinful because it was made from the flesh of trees.
We spend a lot of time memorizing things and chanting them out loud (60)."

Got a little bit side tracked of the mention of forgetting things.. and it's brought me to another example of GG's belief in nature and preserving it. 
Kristina
11/9/2010 04:26:11 pm

I'm definitely the same way, forgetting things so easily. But it makes me wonder if it's just habit. If we COULDN'T write things down, would be learn to remember? Can memory abilities grow? Is it a skill?

I think it helps that they write things a lot of times. Repetition always helps memory! And of course the rhymes and other mnemonics.

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11/11/2010 02:13:42 am

Hi - and of course, I think about story-telling and oral cultures and the possibility of changing the story when it is not written down, and all that stuff. In context with the God's Gardners, I think about how the stories they tell each other (the days of the saints and transformed biblical interpretations) are indeed examples of how, in the hands of Atwood, biblical stories change with time and circumstance.

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