The Commander
The Commander is the unnamed high-ranking official in the Republic of Gilead to whom Offred is assigned as a Handmaid. A former market researcher who helped design the regime's costumes and rituals, he is simultaneously one of its architects and one of its most flagrant secret violators. His private invitations to Offred—for Scrabble, for conversation, for the sight of a forbidden magazine—expose the loneliness and hypocrisy at the core of Gilead's power, revealing a man who craves the very intimacy his system has outlawed.
Identity and Background
The Commander is a senior figure in the Gilead regime, a member of the elite who helped shape the new order. He was once in market research, and according to the historical record, he was responsible for designing the female costumes, including the red dresses of the Handmaids, which he borrowed from the uniforms of German prisoners of war in Canadian camps. He also originated the term "Particicution" and contributed to the design of the Salvaging ceremonies. He lives in a large late-Victorian house with his Wife, Serena Joy, and a household that includes the Marthas Rita and Cora, the chauffeur Nick, and Offred herself. He is described as having silver-gray hair, a mustache, and a mild manner that can seem like that of a midwestern bank president or a museum guard. He keeps a locked box containing a Bible, which he reads aloud during the monthly Ceremony, and his private study is filled with books and forbidden magazines—an oasis of the old world that no woman is supposed to enter.
Secret Meetings and the Violation of Rules
Despite the strict prohibition against Handmaids being alone with Commanders, the Commander arranges secret meetings with Offred in his study, using Nick as a signal. Their first encounter is a request to play Scrabble, a game that has become forbidden and therefore dangerous and desirable. He provides her with hand lotion, a magazine from the 1970s, and later a feather costume to wear to Jezebel's, the secret club for officers. These meetings are not about sex in the usual sense; they are about conversation, intellectual play, and the illusion of a normal relationship. He asks her to kiss him "as if you meant it," revealing a deep need for genuine human connection that his position has denied him. He tells her about his past in market research, explains the regime's philosophy, and even translates the Latin phrase "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" for her, revealing that it was a schoolboy joke he had shared with the previous Handmaid, who later hanged herself.
The Ceremony and the Contradictions of Power
The Commander's role in the monthly Ceremony is a stark contrast to his private behavior. During the ritual, he lies on top of Offred while Serena Joy holds her hands, performing the act of fertilization with a mechanical, perfunctory rhythm. Offred observes that he is "preoccupied, like a man humming to himself in the shower without knowing he's humming," and that the act has nothing to do with passion or desire. He is doing his duty. Yet after these encounters, he seeks her out for Scrabble, as if the Ceremony itself is a separate, impersonal function that leaves his deeper needs unmet. This contradiction—between the public enforcer of a brutal system and the private man who craves intimacy—is central to his character. He tells Offred that the problem before Gilead was that men had "nothing to do with women," that sex was too easy, and that they needed something to fight for. He believes the regime has restored meaning, but his own actions undermine that claim.
Relationships and Conflict
The Commander's relationship with Serena Joy is one of cold formality and mutual resentment. She is aware of his infidelities and his secret meetings with Offred, and when she discovers the feather costume and lipstick on her cloak, she confronts Offred with fury. The Commander, for his part, admits that his wife "won't talk to me much anymore" and that they have little in common. He is also in conflict with the regime's own rules, which he breaks with impunity, believing himself to be above suspicion. His relationship with Offred is complex: she feels a mixture of hatred, pity, and a strange gratitude for the small freedoms he grants her. She recognizes that he is "not a monster" but a man who has become a symbol of a system she despises. His final act, as the black van arrives, is to stand helplessly in the hallway, shrinking as Offred is taken away, accused of "violation of state secrets."
Change and Ending
The Commander's fate is revealed in the Historical Notes: he was purged soon after Offred's escape, accused of liberal tendencies, possessing unauthorized materials, and harboring a subversive. He was tried on television, and the shots show his gray hair. His downfall is a direct consequence of his own secret transgressions, which made him vulnerable to his enemies within the regime. He is a figure who helped create a system that ultimately consumed him, a man who sought to control women's bodies and minds but could not control his own desire for the very things he had outlawed.
Thematic Significance
The Commander embodies the central paradox of Gilead: a regime built on the suppression of desire that is itself driven by the unacknowledged desires of its founders. His secret games with Offred reveal that the system's prohibitions are not absolute but are selectively enforced by those who make the rules. He is a reminder that power does not eliminate human need but merely drives it underground, where it becomes more dangerous and more desperate. His character exposes the lie at the heart of Gilead's ideology—that it is a return to natural order—by showing that its architects are themselves unnatural, lonely, and hungry for the very freedoms they have destroyed.
