The Handmaid's Tale

A high-ranking officer in the Gileadean state, the Commander is effectively Offred’s master until she conceives a child for him and his wife, Serena Joy, and is moved to another posting. According to Offred, he looks like “a midwestern bank president” with silver hair, “his blue eyes uncommunicative, falsely innocuous” (97). He seems somewhere between indifferent to and unaware of the suffering enacted by the regime, arguing that they are trying to “do better” than earlier societies while casually dismissing Offred’s criticisms by noting that “[b]etter never means better for everyone” (222). It is unclear whether he genuinely believes that “we’ve given [women] more than we’ve taken away” (231) or is simply unconcerned with women’s suffering. Certainly, he regularly fails to consider women as real people, treating them more as objects to be owned, used, and “protected” by men.

When the Commander is “fucking […] the lower part of [Offred’s] body” (104), he is engaging in a perfunctory act that “has nothing to do with sexual desire” (105) and is, again, marked by indifference and unawareness. This shifts slightly after he forms a secret relationship with Offred during her visits to his study and she becomes “no longer merely a usable body” (172). His attitude changes from one of indifference to one of patronizing, patriarchal fondness, as though Offred changes from an object to a pet or a precocious child to be humored and entertained but never treated as anything approaching an equal.

After this the Ceremony, or the ritual by which Commanders attempt to impregnate Handmaids, becomes a less detached exercise for him, and he even complains that he finds it “[i]mpersonal” (171) like he has only just noticed this, seemingly still utterly unaware of how abusive and traumatizing it is for Offred. Such delusion, denial, and unawareness are also present when he takes Offred to Jezebel’s, a brothel for high-ranking men, and appears to think that she will genuinely enjoy having sex with him, as though he does not see that the power structures that fundamentally shape his relationship with Offred mean there can never be anything truly mutual or consensual between them. According to the “Historic Notes,” the Commander most likely “met his end […] in one of the earliest purges” (321-22), charged with having “liberal tendencies,” possessing “heretical pictorial and literary materials, and of harbouring a subversive” (322).

Nick is a member of the Commander’s household and his driver. He lives above the garage on the Commander’s property. Nick is “too casual, he’s not servile enough” (27), particularly because he regularly defies protocol to talk to, and even wink at, Offred. This behavior leads Offred to wonder if he is “an Eye” (28), one of Gilead’s secret police. Offred and Nick share a strong mutual attraction. After they first kiss in the sitting room, they have to “move away from each other, slowly, as if pulled towards each other by a force” (110). Later, they look at each other through the window with “the same kind of hunger” (201) as star-crossed Shakespearean lovers. After Serena suggests that Offred try to conceive by sleeping with Nick, they begin an affair, with Offred visiting him “[t]ime after time” (280) without Serena’s knowledge or blessing. From Offred’s descriptions, the encounters seem to be passionate, and Nick appears to genuinely care for her. However, it is not possible to say with certainty how he truly feels. Likewise, it is not possible to know whether or not he is truly helping her escape at the end of the novel. When he first enters Offred’s room and tells her, “It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them” (305), Offred thinks that he may be an Eye and the “escape” may be a trap. However, the “Historical Notes” suggest that it is likely that he truly was a member of Mayday and was genuinely helping her escape. His own fate remains unknown.