The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is a central religious symbol in Gilead, used to instruct girls in the moral geography of their world. It appears most prominently in the Snakes and Ladders game played at the Vidala School, where it functions as a didactic tool to reinforce the regime's theology of reward and punishment. Landing on a Prayer square allows a player to climb a ladder up the Tree of Life, while landing on a Sin square sends them down a Satanic snake. This game transforms a children's pastime into a constant rehearsal of the stakes of existence: the Tree represents the path of righteousness, salvation, and divine favor, while the snake represents the fall into sin and damnation. The game's structure mirrors the binary worldview of Gilead, where every action is judged and every soul is either ascending toward God or descending toward destruction.

Symbolic and Thematic Significance

The Tree of Life is not merely a game board element; it is a potent symbol that encapsulates the regime's control over female consciousness. The game teaches girls that their lives are a series of moral choices with eternal consequences, and that the only safe path is obedience. The Tree's association with life and ascent contrasts sharply with the snake's association with death and descent, reinforcing the idea that deviation from Gilead's rules leads to spiritual and physical ruin. This binary is echoed in the girls' own understanding of their bodies and futures: they are "precious flowers" who must be protected from the "ravenous men" who lurk in the world, and their value is tied to their purity and obedience. The Tree of Life, then, becomes a symbol of the narrow, perilous path that Gilead's girls must walk, a path that promises life but only if they adhere to the strictest codes of conduct.

Connection to Agnes Jemima's Experience

For Agnes Jemima, the Tree of Life takes on a deeply personal and painful meaning. After learning that her mother Tabitha is dying, she feels her world unraveling. She recalls the Bible verse from Psalm 90 that Aunt Vidala made them memorize: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." This verse, with its image of life as fleeting grass, echoes the precarious ascent up the Tree of Life. Later, when Shunammite reveals that Agnes is not Tabitha's biological daughter and that her real mother was a Handmaid, Agnes feels her status plummet. She thinks, "This is not heaven. This is a place of snakes and ladders, and though I was once high up on a ladder propped against the Tree of Life, now I've slid down a snake." The Tree of Life, once a symbol of her privileged position, becomes a measure of her fall. Her identity, her family, and her future are all revealed to be contingent, and she experiences the snake's descent as a lived reality.

The Tree of Life as a Tool of Social Control

The Snakes and Ladders game, with its Tree of Life and Satanic snakes, is a microcosm of Gilead's system of social control. The game is played within school hours, and the Aunts likely approve of its "beneficial amount of warning and threat." It teaches girls that their fate is determined by their choices, but those choices are narrowly defined by the regime. The game's simplicity—Prayer leads up, Sin leads down—mirrors the regime's simplistic moral code. It discourages nuance, complexity, and critical thought, replacing them with a binary of obedience and disobedience. The Tree of Life, in this context, is not a symbol of spiritual growth or personal discovery, but of conformity and submission. It is a tool for producing docile subjects who will accept their assigned roles in Gilead's hierarchy, whether as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. The game's presence in the school curriculum demonstrates how Gilead uses even children's play to inculcate its ideology, making the Tree of Life a symbol not of life, but of a life lived under constant surveillance and judgment.