Faith, Health, and Other Musings
May our minds flourish with creation, and may our hands never deny its expression.
Sure, we’re all holy
(from the neck up)
aren’t we?
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Lo, but if we exchanged in commerce
with kindness as currency
and commensurate compassion,
then – and only then –
would wealth be something of honor.
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“My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter.”
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel reveals a world horrifying in its details yet undeniably familiar, like an old plaything abandoned only to be recovered decades later, faintly recognizable, a symbol of a distant place that does not exist in present time. Her Republic of Gilead illuminates realities and potentialities, extrapolating truths of our histories and refashioning them together.
One such actuality is the economy of names that informs, dictates, and prescribes human value, severally and collectively. To name something is to exercise power over it. We name our children because they are “ours.” We name people, pets, places, and every other tangible and intangible substance in a desperate effort to give order to the things within our reach.
When we gift to someone a nickname, we grant them high value in our inner economy. They have been initiated. They have so climbed the ranks as to achieve a new name — one that is specific to this social group and a private praise that cries “I have known you, and I will keep you.”
The contrary occurs when we yoke someone with an insulting or vulgar “nickname.” They become so repulsive, so abject that their identity is no longer introduced by their birth name, but by this newly-given demotion, this social marker that tells the others that this one is below us.
So also with titles, yet with a bolder intensity. Our accomplishments — our arbitrary victories of scholarship or employment — are so highly valued in the economy of names that they precede them. Doctor Smith. Senator Carrey. Attorney Stone.
Offred, by the structure of her name, uncovers immediately the possessive power of names. Her name announces through the economy of names, “I am of Fred. He is my identity now.” And her title is Handmaid, a collective title that translates in the economy to a dispensable product, an object for persons rather than a person herself.
She meditates on her former name as it fosters a pocket of rebellious freedom. A black market in the Gilead economy of names. She still has something that they can’t control, can’t reorder. Yet the Reader never learns her “real” name. Perhaps, because that isn’t her real name. Perhaps, because that person died for Offred to form. Perhaps, because we wouldn’t know the value of her name even if she told us.
If you haven’t read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, you can purchase it here. The piece is earth-shattering, eye-opening, and perspective-changing.
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I said she was mine
and he was mine.
They were mine.
And I swallowed them whole,
cherishing the explosive flavor of control.
Then, He came,
and pulled them from my throat.
He told me they were His.
They were all His.
But he didn’t devour them.
What kind of revolution is this?
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When I sigh, heavily, in the morning,
my lungs breathe your name.
As my legs stand,
my joints ache your pain.
While I work and I toil,
my back lifts your blame.
When I sigh, heavily, at dusk,
my lungs breathe your name.
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The freedom to know, to choose, to turn outward or inward, is the substructure of a mind healthy in its breathing. Cut off from freedom, the mind rebels, reconstructing reality, growing, fostering in acridity, for it is against its wandering, curious nature, a sort of cruel starvation. So, the mut bites, lurches at its captors — to show them they are not as gods and to project what it feels like to be a beast, cornered.
To restrict the font of knowing is nearly oppression without flaw, for it maddens its subjects, yet it undoes itself steadily, constantly, quietly, as it fashions repressed who have less and less to lose until all that is left to lose is nothing, and control expires.
Praise to poetry
for expression,
for its cure to depression —
for the wild thoughts it raises
for its universal phrases –
for culture and for flavor
for being a mental place saver —
for fervor and reflection
for emotional resurrection.
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This time is deceit
for I’ve felt eternity
in my longing for you
and an immortality in your love.
So, external time withers,
for all time is within you.
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The poor cry out;
we close our doors for the noise.
The poor plead;
we slam our windows for the sound.
The poor hope for relief;
we clasp our hearts for the burden.
The poor die.
They should have said something.
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All literature has enormous value. Each writing contributes another voice – another unique perspective – to the collective consciousness that provides the foundation for progress, advancement, innovation, and evolution. Our wealth of writing empowers us to pick up where our predecessors left off, creating new ideas and forming new systems.
It can be argued, though, that dystopian literature — writings about an exaggeratedly broken yet disturbingly familiar world — are among the most valuable pieces of expression we have at our disposal. We are all familiar with a dystopian narrative. Who hasn’t heard of the unanticipated rise of Katniss Everdeen? Or of the equally impressive Beatrice Prior in Divergent? Or the harrowing worlds described by George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, and Ray Bradbury? A reader of any of these novels encounters literature that is arguably more striking than any literature encountered before.
Dystopian literature behaves as a fictional prophecy, forewarning us against a world of horrors that we are ignorantly (or, in some cases, knowingly) hurdling toward. And the great power of this prophecy isn’t in the thrill the reader gets when she consumes it; the power is later, when the reader recognizes patterns in her government and in her society that she’s seen somewhere before. With the dissemination of dystopian literature, a society can no longer evolve into a cruel, freedomless nation with an unwitting populace dragging along unquestioningly. Or, at least, the leaders of such a revolution would have to be so creative in their takeover that none of the dystopian authors foresaw their tactics.
Fortuitously enough, every dystopia stands on the same pillars. While the flavors of cruelty might vary, each exceedingly broken world requires the same elements to function. Namely, for a government to strip its people of their every right and freedom, it must first remove from them the access to truth, to education, to liberal speech, and, of course, to literature. Ever notice that in every dystopian novel the oppressed have no access to written word? Books are banned and books are burned. We need look no further than to the dystopian leaders themselves to understand how valuable dystopian literature is: it can and will bring down the very dystopian structure they have erected.
While all writings have earthshaking power, dystopian literature has the nuanced function to armor us against the prophecy it tells. For now we know that when the people in power start to censor our speech, ban our books, or veil our truth, it’s time to stand up while we still can.
What dystopian story impacted your life? What about humanity, society, or government was revealed to you in reading it?
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Faith, Health, and Other Musings 