Virtues or Vices in The Handmaid s Tale
... However, instead of trying to guide the community to reach towards the seven virtues of the Christian Church, the community accentuated the seven vices. The Christian Church adopted the seven virtues and vices into their teachings in the early Middle Ages and continues to teach them today. The seven virtues in which all Christians should try to achieve are fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, charity, and hope. Gilead bases its laws to achieve these virtues but instead heightens the seven vices, which are desperation, envy, infidelity, injustice, wrath, inconstancy, and foolishness. ... Margaret Atwood suggest that theocracy be corrupt and can manipulate the very rules that it is trying to preach in The Handmaid’s Tale. ... Though maybe it’s not Your doing; I don’t believe … that what’s going on out there is what You meant” (252). Offred falls and starts to follow more of the vices than virtues, which Gilead was trying to coerce her to follow. ... S. ... Many also go to Jezebel’s and have sex with other women there. ... In The Handmaid’s Tale, two women commit suicide because they could not live with themselves anymore because of restrictions. ... They used Genesis 30:1-3 describing Rachel’s selflessness to have her maid have her child to justify the use of Handmaids.