Theocracy

George Bernard Shaw once said “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart 's desire. The other is to gain it” (Man and Superman). Within Margaret Atwood’s (1985) dystopian fiction The Handmaid’s Tale, desire is shown to be a omnipresent aspect in the theocratic military dictatorship of Gilead. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, desire can be defined as “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen” (388). Within this novel, desire is…

How To Get Green Grass 101 What if the grass isn’t greener on the other side? What does one do to move forward? In the memoir “Persepolis” Marj who is the main character, watched as her family opposed the current form of government. Her parents started to participate in demonstrations to dethrone the Shah, who was Mohammad Pahlavi, because of unfair distribution of wealth. Their actions encouraged Marj to participate in the demonstrations; although she didn’t quite know what she was…

It hides in the darkest corners of people’s imaginations, it is ever prevalent lying in wait to overcome and consume all logical reasoning. Even the strongest have been known to fall into its unreasonably vicious grasp when they are not weary of where it lurks. It is one of the only things that is capable of bringing people down to their knees while at the same time being the driving force that can cause others to aspire to greatness. Whether it is a valid fear of the reality of a situation or a…

In order to understand the true meaning of the Bible, it is necessary for one understands the overall contextual story of the bible. The story of the Bible consists of God's promises to a man named Abraham, and the process through which God fulfills those three promises. The story begins when God made the universe. He created the Heavens and the Earth and then he filled the Earth with his creations. These included the sun and the stars, and the flora and the fauna, but most importantly, God…

During the 1600s, Puritans used theocracy, a government ruled by religion, and their lives revolved around it. Thus, sinning was breaking a law and considered a crime. Anything that did not follow the Puritan lifestyle was considered the Devil’s work and subsequently deemed evil. About 200 years later, long after Puritanism was dead, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne is the nephew of John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials which took place in a Puritan…

Mass hysteria has the potential to tear a community apart as demonstrated in The Crucible. What is hysteria? “It is defined as an overwhelming fear and excitement that overrides all logic, and is often enhanced and intensified by the presence of others who are acting out on that fear” (Campbell). That theme is common throughout the play written by Arthur Miller. From the beginning, where the witchery begins to John Proctor getting hung, the little town of Salem undergoes major changes. That is…

The Handmaid’s Tale In Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, the Republic of Gilead, a strict Christian theocracy, has overthrown the American government. One of the first acts of the regime was to take away any means women had of supporting themselves; fired from their jobs, bank accounts suspended, all rights given to their immediate next male of kin. As it gains more power, Gilead denies women the right to read and all access to technology, beyond the occasional biased news program,…

The Handmaid's Tale, Anne Gardiner writes, "...Atwood calls attention to the 'civil war' that in her Tale is 'led' by Southern Baptists. One reviewer finds it odd that Southern Baptists should lead a counter-revolution against a fundamentalist theocracy..." Gardiner is quoting a reviewer who thinks it's odd that a certain religion could rise and lead a revolution and make a new government. Gardiner is quickly dismissing the possibility that a religion could assume control in modern times if the…

This initial tension between the Indians and colonists, that Captain John Smith captures, never wears off. The Indians never truly trust the colonists for the colonists, killed copious amounts of Indians and destroyed their homes and farms. Along with this, the colonists thought they could use the Indians and force them into slavery, like the Spanish did. Along with this the Jamestown colonists also tried to introduce Christianity to the Indians and tried to forcefully convert them. In the end,…

 Venice monopolized 1/8th of all printed books  Illustrations increased book sales  How did printing affect the world?  Governments printed laws, declarations of war, and propaganda  Book banning and illegal book smuggling occurred  Mass publication of the Bible Art and the Artist/Art and Power  The 3 capitals of renaissance art : Florence, Rome, and Venice  During the Middle Ages and 1400s, the main subject of art was religion  Religious art pieces were created to keep people in the…