Textual Hijacks

Abstract

Two texts, one biblical, one futuristic, connect on a poignant image of death and lasting judgment. The verse closes the book of Isaiah, balancing God’s earlier promise of salvation for the faithful with a somber warning of the eternal punishment awaiting the rebellious. The second, an early passage from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, details one macabre function of the city wall encircling the Republic of Gilead, an authoritarian theocracy that has taken over the United States of America. The bodies of state criminals are hung a second time on the Wall for public display after a mass execution, or “Salvaging” in Gilead-speak, an event fully state-orchestrated with the enforced participation of Gilead’s inhabitants. The Wall is a chilling, futuristic counterpoint to Isaiah’s dark prophecy: the hooks suspending the dead bodies on the Wall literalize the biblical “worm,” extending the victims’ torture (or “fire”) beyond death so that they remain an “abhorring unto all flesh,” unto the inhabitants of Gilead who have to witness both the process and aftermath of their violent deaths. Read against Isaiah 66:24, the Gileadean Wall realizes in dull but alarming technical detail the violent potential of the verse, otherwise poetically and aesthetically contained by metaphor. The two texts mirror each other in yet another way: the act of looking at the spectacle of violence heavily implicates the spectator in the act of violence.

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

—King James Version, Isaiah 66:24

Now we turn our backs on the church and there is the thing we’ve in truth come to see: the Wall. …

Beside the main gateway there are six more bodies hanging, by the necks, their hands tied in front of them, their heads in white bags tipped sideways onto their shoulders. …

We stop, together as if on signal, and stand and look at the bodies. It doesn’t matter if we look. We’re supposed to look: this is what they are there for, hanging on the Wall. …

What they are hanging from is hooks. The hooks have been set into the brickwork of the Wall, for this purpose. The hooks look like appliances for the armless. Or steel question marks. …

What we are supposed to feel towards these bodies is hatred and scorn.

—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale