Read Online Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Margaret Atwood
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his boots on, and should no Sin Eater appear for him, he’d get stuck with the entire bundle of sins. The pawnbroker was the Devil, of course: it was he who’d collect the pawned soul, unless the soul of the Sin Eater was redeemed just as you’d redeem a pawned object from the shop. It’s worth remarking here that a “pawn” could also have the meaning of “a hostage.” Hostages then — as they are today — were people held in captivity, to be exchanged either for other people or for sums of money. The Sin Eater’s soul thus acted as a hostage as well as a substitute for the soul of the man whose sins he’d eaten. No wonder the Sin Eater in Precious Bane goes to “his own place” with “a calm and grievous look.”
The first hostage of this sort that we know about in mythology would appear to be Geshtinanna, from the Sumerian myth of Inanna. The life-goddess Inanna loses a power struggle with Erishkigal, the goddess of Death, and is killed. But it won’t do for the goddess of Life to be dead — bad for the garden, not to mention every other living thing on Earth — so another god makes two golemlike robotic beings who are not organically alive, and therefore not subject to death. These rescue Inanna and bring her back to the light. However, Erishkegal says that the number of the dead must remain complete or the cosmic balance will be upset, so a substitute has to be found to take Inanna’s place in the Sumerian underworld. The victim is the shepherd-king Dumuzi, Inanna’s mortal consort. But Dumuzi’s sister Geshtinanna offers herself as a substitute, and the gods are so impressed with her spirit of self-sacrifice that they split the death term — six months underground for Dumuzi, and six for Geshtinanna. Geshtinanna is thus probably the first example of one individual redeeming another through offering herself as a substitute, which is the essential idea of the Sin Eater: something is owed; the person who owes it can’t pay; then someone else steps forward and pays the debt, or takes the place of the indebted one. The parallels with Christianity are obvious.
Every human pattern exists in both a positive and a negative version. In the negative version of this pattern, instead of offering up yourself as a substitute for someone else, you offer up someone else as a substitute for you. A good example of the negative version may be found in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. The hapless protagonist, Winston Smith, has been sent to the dreaded Room 101. Room 101 always contains the worst thing in the world, which in Winston’s case happens to be rats. The rats have been starved, and are about to be let loose on his eyes.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting, over and over:
“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear off her face, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”
Julia, by the way, is Winston‘s beloved mistress. This substitution of another for yourself is a very familiar concept to students of early religions, as it lies behind the practice of both animal sacrifice and human sacrifice. You owe a debt to the gods, so let something or someone else pay it for you. Readers of the Old Testament will find — especially in Leviticus and Deuteronomy — long lists of what animal you can have ritually killed in payment for which sin, trespass, or guilt of your own, or in repayment for an especially large favour granted by God. This animal redeems that one: you can for instance redeem a first-born donkey with a lamb, which must be killed in its place.
The sacrifices in the Middle East and Greece could be human ones, at
The first hostage of this sort that we know about in mythology would appear to be Geshtinanna, from the Sumerian myth of Inanna. The life-goddess Inanna loses a power struggle with Erishkigal, the goddess of Death, and is killed. But it won’t do for the goddess of Life to be dead — bad for the garden, not to mention every other living thing on Earth — so another god makes two golemlike robotic beings who are not organically alive, and therefore not subject to death. These rescue Inanna and bring her back to the light. However, Erishkegal says that the number of the dead must remain complete or the cosmic balance will be upset, so a substitute has to be found to take Inanna’s place in the Sumerian underworld. The victim is the shepherd-king Dumuzi, Inanna’s mortal consort. But Dumuzi’s sister Geshtinanna offers herself as a substitute, and the gods are so impressed with her spirit of self-sacrifice that they split the death term — six months underground for Dumuzi, and six for Geshtinanna. Geshtinanna is thus probably the first example of one individual redeeming another through offering herself as a substitute, which is the essential idea of the Sin Eater: something is owed; the person who owes it can’t pay; then someone else steps forward and pays the debt, or takes the place of the indebted one. The parallels with Christianity are obvious.
Every human pattern exists in both a positive and a negative version. In the negative version of this pattern, instead of offering up yourself as a substitute for someone else, you offer up someone else as a substitute for you. A good example of the negative version may be found in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. The hapless protagonist, Winston Smith, has been sent to the dreaded Room 101. Room 101 always contains the worst thing in the world, which in Winston’s case happens to be rats. The rats have been starved, and are about to be let loose on his eyes.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting, over and over:
“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear off her face, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”
Julia, by the way, is Winston‘s beloved mistress. This substitution of another for yourself is a very familiar concept to students of early religions, as it lies behind the practice of both animal sacrifice and human sacrifice. You owe a debt to the gods, so let something or someone else pay it for you. Readers of the Old Testament will find — especially in Leviticus and Deuteronomy — long lists of what animal you can have ritually killed in payment for which sin, trespass, or guilt of your own, or in repayment for an especially large favour granted by God. This animal redeems that one: you can for instance redeem a first-born donkey with a lamb, which must be killed in its place.
The sacrifices in the Middle East and Greece could be human ones, at
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