become grossly distorted. First, the ruling powers
hold humanity (women in particular) responsible
for the decline in fertility that has led to the popula-
tion collapse. They then take all responsibility away
from the Maids, making them of the men but hav-
ing no relationships with them. No one is actually
responsible to or for anyone, other than the state,
which apparently takes no responsibility for its
people, as evidenced by the killings in the stadium
and the presence of the forbidden “clubs” to which
the Commander takes Offred. It is an experiment
that is doomed to fail because humans have no
accountability to each other, they are only forced to
take accountability for things that may or may not
be their fault.
As in Gilead, the characters in Herman Mel-
ville’s biLLy budd, saiLor focus on blame, rather
than on being responsible to one another, and Billy
dies because of it. Captain Vere and the others
should take responsibility for Billy both before and
after the incident with Claggart, instead of simply
forcing all the responsibility on him, as they do
by revering the law over what they know to be the
truth.
The idea of being responsible to someone is
analogous to having an obligation. Originally, obli-
gation meant “something owed,” and a similar word,
duty, meant a “debt.” Richard Swinburne, in Respon-
sibility and Atonement, describes our responsibilities
in life as obligations: “By our words and actions we
undertake to do certain things” (20). If we become
parents, we undertake the obligation of taking
care of our children and teaching them right from
wrong. We make other such obligations in our roles
as members of communities and in our jobs. For
instance, in Willa Cather’s o pioneers!, Alexan-
dra believes she is obligated to care for the family,
especially Emil, as well as for the land on which the
farm sits. It is her sense of responsibility that causes
her father to choose her, rather than her brothers,
to carry on his legacy. In William Shakespeare’s
henry v, King Henry is obligated to carry on the
cause of his father, King Henry IV, and improve
England’s fortunes on the world stage. He also feels
a heavy sense of responsibility to the crown itself
and, by extension, to the people of England. Thus,
he turns his back on Falstaff, the mentor of his
reckless (and irresponsible) youth, and has Bardolph
hung for stealing. He also feels a responsibility for
the men who are killed by the French, as they were
there in England’s—and thus his—service.
King Henry feels responsible for his men in
the same way a parent feels about his children. But
unlike Henry, nonroyal parents are expected to take
as much responsibility when their children err as
when they do well. It is here and in other situations
where there is blame to be assigned that the more
common modern usage of responsibility looms large.
Peter French, in Responsibility Matters, notes that
we “spend a lot of time trying to avoid responsibil-
ity.” He also notes that this is as true for positives
as it is for negatives, leading to the conclusion that
responsibility is a burden in any situation (18). Per-
haps, French argues, this is because we do not want
the worry that comes along with membership in a
morally responsible community. French says that we
seek to obscure accountability, even when the conse-
quence would be praise, not blame, because it signi-
fies a loss of innocence merely to acknowledge that
someone—anyone—is responsible. He says, “The
practice of holding people responsible for things
that happen, hence the concept of responsibility
itself, depends for its sense on the purposes or ends
to which we put it” (19). In other words, if there
are no consequences, there is no point in assigning
responsibility. And to be truly responsible, we must
also be consistent, a burden in and of itself. Albert
Jonsen, in Responsibility in Modern Religious Ethics,
says “The responsible man is not merely the one
who is able to perform good actions; he is, in fact,
the good man. His goodness consists precisely in his
responsibility” (5).
In Franz Kafka’s The MetaMorphosis, Gregor
Samsa is heavily burdened by the responsibility
placed on him by his family. He accepts that respon-
sibility, however, and goes to work every day to a
job that he loathes. Gregor, unlike the rest of his
family, who sit home, irresponsibly allowing Gregor
to support them, cannot pretend innocence of the
world and its workings. However, when one day he
wakes up as a giant cockroach, he is gradually freed
of this burden. He cannot work in this condition, so
the responsibility is lifted from him. As his family
slowly takes on the burdens of taking care of Gregor94 responsibility