Using clay I sculpted a flower to represent fragility purity and virginity. These are values that women are expected to uphold in every text we have read in HL English. I focused on The Handmaid's Tale and The Things They Carried prompting my decision to paint the flower a crimson red symbolizing menstruation. The flower of menstruation represents the contrast between how the two novels explore the motif of the Biblical role of women. The Bible paints women as a fragile creature created to reproduce. Although this statement may be controversial the Word of God proclaims “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12). In The Handmaid’s Tale the author creates a society based on an interpretation of the Bible’s role of women a world where fertile women are objectified as a means of reproduction. In The Things They Carried the author contrasts the ideal role of women with the fictional truth of a story told by Rat Kylie who describes a man who mailed his girlfriend to the troop site only for her to become a greenie and obsessed with Vietnam. In both novels there is an unspoken expectation that the women should be the first to succumb to pressure. After all it was Eve who ate the apple first.