Three Concepts That Apply To “Bread”

“Bread” by Margaret Atwood thoroughly discusses the issues and problems within the modern society by making the readers to imagine different scenarios and dilemma from different view. The situations the author portrays contain several essential elements in people’s daily live, such as food, life and choice. However, Atwood not only illustrates the above factors, she also implies the negative side of human being and society in her article. The facts like greed, jealousy and ambition have perhaps the most influential impact to people and the society they live in. Overall, the article summarizes three important concepts that may affect one’s decision and have great impact to the society; that is the selfishness and selflessness within a person and his compassion to others around him.

Selfishness is probably the most common characteristics in human and it reveals when there is time to make a decision between people themselves and others. In “Bread”, the author tells the readers a well known German fairytale to illustrate people’s selfishness. In the tale, a poor sister begs her rich sister for some bread to feed her children but gets rejected and drove away. Then the husband of the rich sister comes home and tries to cut himself a piece of fresh bread, he is astonished to find out that the bread out flowed streams of blood. By using this allegory, Atwood reminds the readers the severe impact the selfishness within people have to the society. That is people usually are over ambitious and greedy toward what they already have therefore refuse to give up some of it to help ones in need. Like the rich sister in the article, a loaf of bread is not a big deal to her but she just refused to provide food to her poor sister. There are too many selfish people who are self-centered in which they always put themselves above everyone else. They seldom care about others and only mind their own business. This phenomenon has caused the loss of humanity in the society and damages the world’s harmony. By using the bread as a symbol to the crux and problems of society, Atwood gives the warning and urgency to the readers that people’s selfishness and greed may eventually damage the society and turn it into possible chaos.

Not only the negative concept applies to the “Bread”, Atwood also wants the readers to think of people’s selflessness which affect the society in a positive way. In one of the scenario where the author asks the readers to imagine a brother and a sister whom struggle to stay alive in a horrible famine. There is only one piece of bread left and it is not enough for both of them. If the brother is willing to sacrifice himself and give the whole piece of bread to his starving sister, it is considered to be selfless. The other example is in the other scenario where a prisoner’s selflessness is being challenged because he has to choose to save between his own life and several other friends’ lives. If he chooses to reveal the secret then many of his friends will possibly get killed. However, if he decides to save his friend, he will soon be executed before the secret divulge. By putting the readers into these dilemmas Margaret Atwood portrays a characteristics that has no regards or thought for a person himself. Being selfless like the older brother in the scenario, a person can