Fred, who once revered his wife’s outlook, has a different answer to what Gilead’s greatest “responsibility” is: “Obeying your husband,” he responds flatly. While Dante’s Inferno only had nine rings of hell, this proclamation brings Handmaid’s Tale to another, new level of nightmarish sadism in an infinite number of levels of nightmarish sadism. Riding the belief that obeying one’s husband — even if it means allowing the easily avoided death of a baby — is a wife’s paramount duty, Fred beats Serena for her supposed sins with a belt, using cherry-picked quotes from the Bible to justify his domestic abuse. None of this has anything to do with protecting the survival of humankind. No, it’s about soothing Fred’s ego because his wife went against his murderous, misogynistic wishes. The song and dance about the importance of babies only allowed Fred to attain the kind of power where he can do whatever he wishes, without anyone telling him “no.”