Hallelujah

Hallelujah, a Hebrew word meaning "Praise the Lord," appears in The Handmaid's Tale as a remnant of the pre-Gilead world that has been both suppressed and secretly preserved. It is a piece of forbidden music from Serena Joy's former life as a gospel singer, a sound she now plays in private, and it belongs to a category of songs that the regime has outlawed because they use words like "free." The word thus marks the distance between the religious language the regime publicly claims and the private, nostalgic, and even subversive uses to which that language is put by those it controls.

Serena Joy's Former Glory

Serena Joy, before Gilead, was a television gospel singer known as Serena Joy, a stage name. Offred remembers watching her as a child on the "Growing Souls Gospel Hour," where Serena Joy was the lead soprano, a petite ash-blonde who could "smile and cry at the same time." Later, Serena Joy stopped singing and began making political speeches about the sanctity of the home, though she did not stay home herself. Offred recalls that Luke and she would watch Serena Joy on the late-night news, finding her both funny and frightening. Now, in Gilead, Serena Joy no longer makes speeches; she has "become speechless." The only trace of her former voice is a disc made long ago, which she plays with the volume turned low so she will not be caught listening. From the front sitting room, Offred hears "the thin sound of Serena's voice, from a disc made long ago and played now with the volume low, so she won't be caught listening as she sits in there knitting, remembering her own former and now amputated glory: Hallelujah."

Forbidden Music and Outlawed Words

The word "Hallelujah" belongs to a category of songs that are no longer sung in public in Gilead, especially those that use words like "free." Offred, alone in her room, sometimes sings to herself in her head, recalling the hymn "Amazing Grace" with its line "Was bound, but now am free," but she cannot remember if the words are right because such songs are "considered too dangerous" and "belong to outlawed sects." The regime has banned secular music entirely; the cassettes Offred later uses to record her story are camouflaged with labels like "Elvis Presley's Golden Years" and "Boy George Takes It Off." The word "Hallelujah" thus exists in Gilead as a sound that is both sacred and forbidden, a relic of a time when religious music could be a public performance rather than a state-mandated ritual.

The Regime's Appropriation of Religious Language

The regime of Gilead systematically appropriates and redefines religious language for its own purposes. At the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, the Handmaids are fed Bible verses at every meal: "Give me children, or else I die" from the story of Rachel and Leah at breakfast, and the Beatitudes at lunch, though Offred notes that the regime "left things out" and that the voice reading them was a man's, so not even an Aunt would be guilty of the sin of reading. The Commander reads from the Bible during the Ceremony, but the Bible itself is kept locked in a box, "an incendiary device" that the Handmaids are not allowed to read themselves. The word "Hallelujah," once a spontaneous cry of praise, becomes in this context a sound that Serena Joy must hide, a fragment of a self that has been "amputated." It is a word that the regime has not yet managed to fully control, and its private, whispered survival is a small act of resistance against the state's monopoly on meaning.