The Bible and Western Culture
1. The Bible as Political/Philosophical Statement
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a patriarchal society that prides itself in the protection of women. The marked hierarchy of power and status revealed here cannot be denied and the society’s attitude towards women is as anti-feminist as many could ever imagine. The society in which those without power are not only weak but ignorant is reminiscent of the early Middle Ages when only the highly educated and powerful were able to read, and even fewer were able to read the Bible. The society described by Offred has almost a puritanical flavour to it. The Gileadean religious attitude is one based on only a few exclusionary Biblical ideas. Gilead is a perfect example of the danger of using the Bible too literally. Although Biblical references, themes, laws and images are found consistently in Gileadean society; the selective nature of the passages used by the Commanders for enforcing laws and ideas ensure that they will not be contradicted, but supported by the Bible. This phenomenon can be seen in the use of the creation story (Genesis 1-2); the story of Jacob’s wives Rachel and Leah (Genesis 30:1-8), and the ideas of salvation as seen by the Gileadean society.
The story of creation found in the first two chapters of Genesis is alluded to and explicitly used in The Handmaid’s Tale. The story is recounted rarely by those who are not in a power position and always to reinforce the ideas and laws set out by the Gileadean society. The Commander of the house where Offred is stationed reads to the household periodically, with little variation and always with the same purp...
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...ers they forbid all reading, and in fact one of the men suspected to be the Commander in Offred’s household in the Historical Notes is credited with having said, “Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won’t do that again.” The use of the Bible in this novel is to establish laws within its society; this is not so different from many accepted societies of today, except in that there is no freedom of interpretation, and that the religious laws of some, must apply to all in Gilead.
Bibliography
Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1985
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1962
Wilson, Sharon R., Thomas B. Friedman, and Shannon Hengen, ed. Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works, New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1996
There are various moments in this book where the personal discovery of the Handmaid, Offred, is displayed. In almost every chapter there is a moment where she recognizes the everyday changes that have happened in her life. Gilead changed the lives of many different people. From having all the freedom one could ever want to having to obey the government’s every order; most people were not happy with this change. Offred was one victim in particular who did not like the new changes. It split her family apart. Her husband Luke was either taken to an unknown place or killed, her daughter was given to a different mother, and she was put to use as a Handmaid. Offred’s life was changed in many detrimental ways. Her job is to now be placed in the home of a Commander and his infertile Wifeand be a “two-legged womb(s), that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices” until they give birth to a child (Atwood 136). After they give birth to the child, they are allowed to stay for a short while to nurse the child. They are then moved into the next home of a Commander to rep...
Although Offred is the heroine of this story, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the hero’s journey can be found in many characters in the story as well. This story is breaking into shambles between the past and the present, however, through the story, readers can still see the signs of the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell has studied. Offred, being a handmaid, has been thrown into a world where women are powerless and stripped away of their rights to read and write. Atwood illustrates a dystopian world where equality is a part of history, not in the present day Gilead. However, Offred is one of the main characters who ceased to live in a degrading world and find means to escape. Thus, Offred begins on her Hero’s Journey, which occurs
Imagine a country where choice is not a choice. One is labeled by their age and economical status. The deep red cloaks, the blue embroidered dresses, and the pinstriped attire are all uniforms to define a person's standing in society. To be judged, not by beauty or personality or talents, but by the ability to procreate instead. To not believe in the Puritan religion is certain death. To read or write is to die. This definition is found to be true in the book, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) by Margaret Atwood. It is a heartbreaking story of one young woman and her transformation into the Gilead society, the society described above. In the book, we meet Offred, the narrator of the story. This story is not the first to create a society in which the only two important beliefs in a society are the ability to procreate and a strict belief in God. It is seen several times in the Old Testament, the Bible. The Biblical society is not as rigid as the Republic of Gilead, which Margaret Atwood has built, but it is very similar. The Handmaid's Tale holds several biblical allusions.
“We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we would stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouths.” (Atwood, p4) The handmaids whisper to each other to exchange information. They engage in this conversation to keep alive the nature of relationships between people. It is very lonely for these women, for they cannot say what is on their mind, they are only allowed pre-approved phrases from Gilead’s authorities Without this contact it would be impossible for the women to reminisce and be comforted. Another way of keeping the past real to Offred is to remember old stories from before the revolution. She spends a lot of her time thinking about her husband Luke and how the city used to look before, “Lilies used to be a movie theater here, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their own minds” (Atwood, 25). These small rebellions that Offred and other handmaids participate in are very significant. The simple fact that they choose to engage in these insurgences shows that they still cling on to their more just and free past. They still have a notion of truth and are keeping it alive. Having these passions and feelings causes the structure of Gilead to truly not work, and will probably (The Handmaid’s Tale was left open ended) lead to its demise.
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a story heavily influenced by the Bible and has many biblical themes that are used to prove Atwood’s belief in balance. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. The story is told through the perspective of a handmaid named Offred and begins when she is placed at her third assignment as a housemaid. Offred describes her society as a fundamentalist theocracy where the Christian God is seen as the divine Ruler over the Republic of Gilead.
Early on it is evident that the authority of this society has been changed from a theocracy to a totalitarian government. The first sentence reveals that the current living quarters of the main character, Offred, are located in "what had once been the gymnasium" (3). The narrator recounts the past fifty years in this place from felt skirts of the fifties to the green spiked hair of the nineties. Then she turns to describe its transformation into what resembles an army barrack but is actually functioning as a kind of prisoner of war camp. In these few short sentences, Atwood has described the conditions of a place called Gilead, which is located in what used to be called the United States. In chapter four the author reveals that the current government is waging a war against the church. This is evidence that this society has shifted away from recognizing God as its supreme authority. The narrator then mentions that church song...
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.
In the The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood identifies Offred’s Mother as a secondary character who is to be pushed aside and mentioned very briefly throughout the novel. Atwood does not even give her a name, and therefore we must acknowledge her as “Offred’s Mother.” Offred is a rebellious character and she is unknowingly but actively using language to revolt against Gilead in the thing that she is writing. Offred’s mother was a protester in pre-Gilead times. We also learn the significance of Offred’s relationship with Offred’s mother. Offred did not get along with her mother, and since Offred’s mom was a feminist and actively protested for women's rights she had no time for Offred. Ironically enough, Gilead shows that women are important but in the wrong way. Gilead objectifies women as only having one purpose and one purpose only, to reproduce. Women are guarded and taken out of harms way but that is as far as Gilead goes. Men are of real importance in Gilead because they need to “fight the war.” Offred’s mother embodied everything that Gilead condemns. Women are “safe” but have no freedom. Gilead is a reaction to the Women's Movement. The significance of Offred’s mother as a secondary character is her distant relationship with Offred and the way we relate to Offred’s mother while looking through the lense of Gilead. A key piece to keep in mind is that Atwood, the author of the novel was an activist and feminist herself and Offred’s mother is a way for Atwood to assess the women’s movement in her time era and the possible outcomes.
The society established by the Republic of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is founded on and sustained by false doctrine. They intentionally twist and skew the Bible in order to justify their actions and brainwash the women who are involuntarily participating in their indoctrinated society. The Gilead does not treat the Bible as the divine word of God. Instead, they exploit its authority and use it as a tool for their own benefit. The very framework of the Gilead’s social hierarchy is in sharp contradiction to everything the Bible teaches, but because they are so corrupt and only use the Bible for their own advantage, they seem not to care. Instead of abiding by the teachings in the Bible and letting them shape how things are done, they hand-select and contort certain parts of it to match the framework of their own aspirations and beliefs, which are by no means Christian. Every piece of scripture that the Republic customizes is specifically suited to help them achieve their ultimate goal: indoctrinating an entire society for the purposes of personal power and authority. The end product is the unethical, dysfunctional society that is depicted in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Republic of Gilead is by no means a true religious group, but they do use religion and skewed religious text as a reference for the foundation, justification, manipulation, and enforcement of their new society.
The Handmaid's Tale presents an extreme example of sexism and misogyny by featuring the complete objectification of women in the society of Gilead. Yet by also highlighting the mistreatment of women in the cultures that precede and follow the Gileadean era, Margaret Atwood is suggesting that sexism and misogyny are deeply embedded in any society and that serious and deliberate attention must be given to these forms of discrimination in order to eliminate them.
In The Handmaids Tale, Gilead the dystopian state is the reason for all of misery and misuse of power. In the book, the narrator Offred explains how Gilead came to be. Gilead was created because of low birth rates, the mass killing of the congress and the president, and pollution from radioactivity and toxic waste. From there, social classes were created to determine each role of people in the society. The Handmaids are used to make babies of the Commanders, while the Wives are underneath the Handmaid, and the action of sexual intercourse takes place. The Commanders are the men that are high in ranking of Gilead, and their Wives are considered to be sterile, and this is where the use of Handmaids come in. The narrator Offred is a Handmaid and she explains how she feels “erased” and how she is powerless and becomes suicidal. During pre-Gilead, the rights of women were abolished, and given to the closest family male member. This is where Offred feels powerless because her husband Luke wanted to make love that night the law was passed for women, but she refu...
Throughout the novel the reader often gets forced into or tends to question him/herself about what really a fictional novel is. Handmaid’s tale is a novel that is fragmented in its plot and theme, and often this leaves the reader to play the role of piecing together and looking at the larger picture of the theme and plot, but often this causes certain times in the novel involving ambiguity. This type of fragmentation is part of postmodern literature. This novel unlike the conventional structure of novel, often points out to the reader itself that the story is somehow linked with the main character and the reader, and this link is where the main theme and the intellectual knowledge of the character in the story lies. The evidence of this unconventional structure lies in the thoughts are quotes said by Offred, the main character, “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off “(49 Atwood). This quote is in the end of chapter 7 and it reveals the underlying connection between
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, the author Margaret Atwood gives the reader an understanding of what life would be like in a theocratic society that controls women’s lives. The narrator, Offred gives the reader her perspective on the many injustices she faces as a handmaid. Offred is a woman who lived before this society was established and when she undergoes the transition to her new status she has a hard time coping with the new laws she must follow. There are many laws in this government that degrade women and give men the authority of each household. All women are placed in each household for a reason and if they do not follow their duties they are sent away or killed. Atwood bases the irrational laws in the Gilead republic on the many
As The Handmaid’s Tale is considered an allegory of the social injustice women face against traditional expectations of their role in society, the symbolism of the Handmaids and other women as a whole for repressed feminine liberty and sexuality allows Atwood to connect her work to the theme between gender and expectations in her society. As Handmaids in the Republic of Gilead, females are stripped of their previous identity and are defined as a tool of reproduction for the men who is assigned them. At its core, these females are forced against their will to be mere tools, experiencing unwanted sex at least once a month, which Gilead names “The Ceremony”, hiding its true nature as a form of rape. Offred
The epigraph in The Handmaid’s Tale amplifies the importance of fertility in Gilead. The quotation at the beginning of the book ‘‘And when Rachel saw the she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I die...And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees,that I may also have children by her.’’ makes it seem that Gilead wants to go back to traditional values, thus manipulates its citizens that their ideology is correct since it corresponds with what the Bible says. Consequently, this state is telling its citizens that a woman’s worthiness only depends if she is able to produce or not. In fact women who are barren, and are not of a high class are sent to the colonies. The handmaids’s only purpose is further amplified through the rights Gilead abolishes; they can not communicate with others, in fact Offred says, ‘How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it’ and are no longer able to go outside alone or without being spied...