Scrabble Games

The Scrabble Games are a recurring, clandestine activity between Offred and the Commander in his study, forming the central axis of their secret relationship. What begins as a seemingly trivial request for a game of Scrabble becomes a profound act of transgression, a site of negotiation, and a window into the Commander's peculiar desires and the regime's hypocrisies. These sessions redefine the power dynamics between them, offering Offred a dangerous taste of freedom and intellectual engagement while exposing the Commander's loneliness and need for a connection he cannot find within the sanctioned structures of Gilead.

Initiation and the Forbidden Room

The first game is proposed by the Commander during Offred's initial, terrified visit to his study. After summoning her through Nick, the Commander, standing before a fireless fireplace in a studied pose, asks her to play. The request is so unexpected, so banal, that Offred nearly laughs, recognizing the game as something once played by old women and adolescents, now transformed into a forbidden, dangerous, and indecent act. The study itself is an "oasis of the forbidden," lined with books and magazines that are strictly prohibited for women. The Scrabble board and its glossy counters become symbols of a lost world of language and choice. Offred finds the act of holding the letters, spelling words like "Larynx," "Valance," "Quince," and "Zygote," to be a "voluptuous" feeling, an "eyeblink of freedom." She wins the first game deliberately and lets him win the second, still uncertain of the terms of their exchange.

Ritual, Routine, and the Nature of the Commander's Desire

The games quickly become a regular, though unpredictable, occurrence, signaled by Nick's hat being askew. The routine is established: two games of Scrabble, followed by a goodnight kiss. The Commander's desire, however, is not for the sexual act Offred had anticipated. Instead, he seeks companionship, intellectual stimulation, and a form of intimacy that is absent from his life with Serena Joy. He confesses that his wife "wouldn't understand" and that they "don't seem to have much in common, these days." Offred comes to see his request as a "fetish for lace-up shoes," a kinky violation in its own way. The games are a space where the Commander can be a "daddyish" figure, rewarding Offred's "precocity" and enjoying her performance. He brings her old magazines like a Vogue from the seventies, which she finds both painful and alluring, and gives her hand lotion, a small but significant luxury. The Commander's motives remain opaque to Offred, but she recognizes that his desire for her to be entertained and his willingness to break rules for her are a form of power he is demonstrating, both to her and to himself.

A Bargaining Session and a Shift in Power

The Scrabble games evolve into a bargaining session. Offred learns that she can ask for things, and the Commander is willing to provide them, within limits. This dynamic culminates in a pivotal conversation where Offred asks about the Latin phrase "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" scratched in her closet. The Commander, amused, reveals it is a schoolboy joke meaning "Don't let the bastards grind you down." He then tells her that the previous Handmaid, who wrote the phrase, hanged herself after Serena Joy found out about their own secret meetings. This revelation is a turning point. Offred realizes she now has something on the Commander: "the possibility of my own death" and "his guilt." She uses this leverage to ask for knowledge, for "whatever there is to know" about what is going on. The games have become a space where she can assert a form of agency, however precarious.

Escalation and the Erosion of Boundaries

As the relationship deepens, the Commander's behavior becomes more familiar and less guarded. He drinks Scotch in her presence, cheats at Scrabble, and turns on his short-wave radio to show off. He becomes philosophical, justifying the Gileadean regime by arguing that men had lost their purpose and that the new system, for all its flaws, provides structure. He asks for Offred's opinion, a request that is both a form of intimacy and a trap. The games culminate in a night when the Commander takes Offred to Jezebel's, a secret club for high-ranking officials. He provides her with a feather costume and makeup, a disguise that is also a degradation. At the club, he shows her off, demonstrating his mastery of the world. The Scrabble games, which began as a private, intellectual transgression, have led to a public performance of his power and her complicity. The final, failed attempt at intimacy in the hotel room, where Offred lies inert, underscores the fundamental emptiness of their arrangement. The Scrabble Games, for all their initial promise of freedom, ultimately reveal the limits of that freedom within the confines of Gilead and the Commander's own compromised humanity.