Summary Of Bible By Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff’s “Bible” explores the nature of a woman whose life is in “danger” and the personality of her abductor.
At the beginning of the story, Maureen is vulnerable. She leaves her friends at a bar to go home alone on a cold Friday night. She is powerless over her own body. Although she was trying to get away, if she went back for the gloves “she knew she’d end up staying”(1). Maureen is a pretty distracted person. First of all, she left her gloves in the club. Second of all, “She had gone almost a block when she realized that she was walking in the wrong direction”(1).
Maureen, as we learn, is a high school English teacher. She has a daughter. She calls herself worn-out, balding, arthritic mother. She has low self-esteem. “Maureen allowed this thought in self-mockery, to make herself feel young, but it did not have this effect”(1). Maureen is heartbroken. She had lost her daughter, Grace, who walked away from a full scholarship at

Even when she is under pressure, she is able to maintain calm and function well. “With steady hands she started the car and pulled out of the lot and turned left as the man directed (…)” (3).
Maureen is astute and brilliant. She starts playing mind games with her abductor. She speeds and slows the car, until she makes him uncomfortable. “You are trying to be arrested,” he said (4). Maureen was dying to know the reason of her abduction but, did not want to overwhelm him with too many questions. “She waited for him to say more”(4).
Cowardice sometimes seizes Maureen’s being. She underestimates herself. “She wasn’t far from the road, but the idea of running for it appeared to her a demeaning absurdity, herself flailing through the drifts like some weeping, dopey, sacrificial extra in a horror movie” (6). Maureen is confused and puzzled throughout the abduction. She thinks, her abductor has the wrong person.“She shook her head as if to clear it”