book around the world, and he suffered threats to
his life. Countries such as Pakistan and India with
large Muslim populations banned the book in the
interest of public safety.
Religion is a powerful source of both succor and
conflict, emerging from the wellsprings of our most
deeply human impulses and arousing our most pas-
sionate responses. It becomes a lens through which
issues of race, ethnicity, and identity are parsed.
Literature, in its extraordinary power to mirror and
mediate these passions and conflicts, finds both its
source and its substance in religion, in the shape of
themes, images, symbols, and the very language it
uses to appeal to us.
See also Anonymous: beowuLF; Bunyan, John:
piLGriM’s proGress, the; Crane, Stephen: red
badGe oF couraGe, the; Defoe, Daniel: robin-
son crusoe; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “Divin-
ity School Address, The”; Faulkner, William:
LiGht in auGust; Greene, Graham: heart oF
the Matter, the; Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
scarLet Letter, the; younG GoodMan brown;
Hemingway, Ernest: FareweLL to arMs, a; Jef-
ferson, Thomas: notes on the states oF vir-
Ginia; Joyce, James: dubLiners; portrait oF the
artist as a younG Man, a; Lawrence, Jerome,
and Robert E. Lee: inherit the wind; Mel-
ville, Herman: “Bartleby the Scrivener”;
Moby-dick; Molière: tartuFFe; O’Connor,
Flannery: “Good Man Is Hard to Find, A”;
wise bLood; Potok, Chaim: chosen, the; Row-
landson, Mary: narrative^ oF^ the captivity^
and restoration oF Mary rowLandson; Stein-
beck, John: Grapes^ oF wrath, the; Stowe, Har-
riet Beecher: uncLe toM’s cabin; Twain, Mark:
adventures oF huckLeberry Finn; Winterson,
Jeanette: oranGes are not the onLy Fruit;
Wright, Richard: bLack boy.
FURTHER READING
Detweiler, Robert, and David Jasper, eds. Religion and
Literature: A Reader. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2000.
Frye Northrup. The Great Code: The Bible and Litera-
ture. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Jasper, David. Images of Belief in Literature. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
Rajender Kaur
responsibility
The word responsibility has two connotations in
modern English. We can be responsible for some-
thing, which means we are accountable and we will
take the blame or reward should there be any. This
connotation can apply to a person, as in the way that
parents are responsible for their children or coaches
are responsible for their players, or it can apply to a
thing, as in the way someone might take responsi-
bility for a car accident or an accounting mistake.
We can also be responsible to people or organiza-
tions. This connotation implies that we “report” to
someone, or more accurately that we must “respond”
(the root of responsibility) to them. The parent who
is responsible for her children, in that she will take
responsibility should they break a neighbor’s win-
dow or skip school, is at the same time responsible
to her children in that she must account for the
decisions she makes that affect their lives, such as
distinguishing right from wrong and providing a
stable home life. These two connotations work well
together in that they both derive from the same idea.
As noted above, the root of responsibility is “reponse.”
To “respond” is an action. In life, being “responsible
for” or being “responsible to” both require respond-
ing to situations—in other words, acting in the best
interests of those in our sphere, including ourselves.
However, there are no clear-cut answers to questions
regarding just what those best interests are and just
how far we are required to widen that sphere.
It is only in the 20th century and beyond that
these questions about responsibility have become
so difficult. Prior to this period, the emphasis was
always soundly on being responsible to, and respon-
sibility was not thought of as being particularly
virtuous (Moran 35). Being responsible to people,
or things, or God, simply meant that these were
the entities to whom you would be held account-
able. This simpler interpretation of the word may
have made it easier for a society to know how to
be accountable and what the implications of that
were. But as the shift occurred in the 20th century
toward responsibility for, and its accompanying
blame and punishment, these questions became
more complicated. For example, in Gilead, the dys-
topian society Margaret Atwood depicts in The
handMaid’s taLe, the concept of responsibility hasresponsibility 93