Commanders of the Faithful

The Commanders of the Faithful are the supreme ruling class of the Republic of Gilead, the men who designed and now administer its theocratic regime. They are the heads of every household, the officers of every military and police force, and the sole interpreters of the state religion. Their authority is absolute, yet the narrative reveals them as a diverse and often contradictory group: some are ideologues, some are bureaucrats, and some are men who, having seized power, find themselves trapped by the very system they built. They are the objects of both terror and a strange, dangerous intimacy for the women whose lives they control.

Identity and Authority

The Commanders are distinguished by their black uniforms, which make them look like "museum guards" or "midwestern bank presidents," and by their monopoly on reading and writing. The Bible is kept locked in a box, and only a Commander may read from it aloud during the household Ceremony. This control over the sacred text is the foundation of their power: they alone possess "the word." Their authority is further reinforced by a rigid hierarchy of titles and ranks, from the local Commanders who oversee individual households to the highest officials who orchestrate national policy. They are served by the Guardians of the Faith, a police force used for routine duties, and protected by the Angels, the elite military. The Commanders are also the patrons of the Eyes, the secret police who surveil the entire population, including the Commanders themselves.

Rituals and Domestic Power

The Commanders' power is most visibly enacted in the domestic sphere. Each Commander presides over a household that includes his Wife, Marthas (servants), and a Handmaid, whose sole purpose is to bear his child. The monthly Ceremony is a ritualized act of procreation in which the Commander, his Wife, and the Handmaid participate in a prescribed, non-erotic sexual act. The Commander performs his duty with a "regular two-four marching stroke," a perfunctory act that is "serious business" and "not recreation." This ritual, which the Commander himself finds "impersonal," is a stark demonstration of how the regime has stripped sex of intimacy and transformed it into a state-mandated function. Beyond the Ceremony, the Commander is the ultimate arbiter of household discipline, though he is expected to delegate the punishment of women to his Wife.

The Commander as an Individual

The narrative focuses on the unnamed Commander of Offred's household, revealing him to be a man of contradictions. He is not overtly cruel, but he is complicit in a system of profound cruelty. He is a former market researcher who helped design the Handmaids' red costumes, a detail that suggests a bureaucratic, almost aesthetic, approach to oppression. He is also a man who breaks his own rules, secretly inviting Offred to his study to play Scrabble, read old magazines, and kiss him "as if [she] meant it." These clandestine meetings reveal a deep loneliness and a desire for a form of intimacy that his position has made impossible. He tells Offred that his wife "doesn't understand" him, a confession that is both banal and pathetic. This personal weakness gives Offred a small measure of power over him, a power she recognizes as both dangerous and intoxicating.

The System's Vulnerability

Despite their immense power, the Commanders are not invulnerable. The regime is rife with internal purges, and a Commander can be destroyed by accusations of "liberal tendencies" or by harboring a subversive. The Commander's secret relationship with Offred, and his possession of forbidden magazines, make him a target. The narrative suggests that the very system that elevates the Commanders also isolates them, making them susceptible to betrayal by their own Eyes, their servants, or even their Wives. The final scene, in which the black van arrives for Offred, implies that the Commander himself may be implicated in her escape or destroyed by it. The Commanders of the Faithful, then, are not a stable aristocracy but a precarious elite, constantly at risk of being consumed by the machinery of terror they themselves have set in motion.