The Handmaid ’s Tale 177Even Offred, once in contact with Mayday, starts
playing a spy game. Her relationship with the Com-
mander evolves as time passes by. He invites her at
night to play board games and offers her presents;
she, in turn, starts asking questions about the Gil-
ead system. This forbidden “friendly” relationship
(though the power structure that rules their official
relationship is never questioned) takes Offred to an
underground nightclub set up by the Commanders
where waitresses/prostitutes serve and please the
dignitaries of Gilead. Little by little, she sees more
and learns more, and knowledge becomes another
weapon of resistance: the knowledge that the Gilead
system is not as closed and flawless as she was once
told it was. Offred knows that she would be pun-
ished, or even killed, if anyone knew (especially the
Commander’s wife, Serena Joy) about this unusual
relationship with the Commander, but she continues
it in order to know and tell what she knows.
Offred’s official position in the Commander’s
household is that of a vessel. She must give the
Commander and his wife a child. Not fulfilling this
“sacred duty” means death for her. For that reason,
she will be convinced by Serena Joy, who fears that
her husband might be infertile, to have intercourse
with Nick, the driver, to increase her chances of get-
ting pregnant. However, she goes to Nick more in
search of physical closeness and pleasure, which is
forbidden in Gilead. Again, if anyone knew about
this treasonous behavior, she would die. Her actions
are heroic in the sense that she knows death awaits
her whatever path she chooses, but she chooses the
hardest path: She does not stand still waiting for the
expected child or its alternative, death. She chooses
the path that will remind her how to feel and show
her the reality of a corrupt system regularly upset by
Mayday and its web of undercover rebels. Her acts
of heroism are acts of hope.
Sophie Croisy
OppressiOn in The Handmaid ’s Tale
Gilead’s Commanders as well as a punitive organi-
zation called “the Eyes” have full power. The Com-
manders have set up a strict hierarchical system of
oppression (though they define that system as the
only way toward a better, safer, peaceful society)
based on strict rules of conduct. Everyone has a
specific role and position that is inescapable once
attributed. If this role is not fulfilled, punishment is
immediate. The Eyes, a sort of secret police, take the
disobedient ones away in a black car or van. What
happens to the prisoners is unclear but likely to be
connected to the regular “prayvaganzas,” punitive
ceremonies where the enemies of Gilead are sen-
tenced to death.
Only the top of the Republic of Gilead’s hierar-
chy seems to have real power. The rest is submissive
to the oppressive system set up by the Commanders,
who define themselves as Gilead’s leaders and its
protectors from the war raging outside. They lead
that war and seem to own other parts of the Ameri-
can territory as a result of deadly fights between the
soldiers of Gilead and the soldiers of an America
that still exists outside the wall that surrounds and
limits Gilead. The soldiers of Gilead have a basic
practical function: to fight and die for Gilead. The
Guardians of the Faith, a kind of local police, is used
for “routine policing and other menial functions,
digging up the Commander’s Wife’s garden.” They
are given the power to keep things in order, but they
have very limited rights. They are only male servants
in the Gilead system and are not allowed contact
with women.
The Aunts are an organization of women whose
role is to form young and fertile women to become
Handmaids. Their only power lies in their role as
teachers, though they teach other women through
oppression, and what they teach is the obligation
to accept the oppressive system now in place. Their
training in behavior and religion must trans-
form “Unwomen”—that is, modern, free American
women with the right to chose their lives—into
Handmaids (that is, birthing machines). The Hand-
maids must learn to dismiss and despise their old
life (that is, the modern life of today’s real America),
take pills to keep quiet and docile, and learn the new
rules of a system that has turned them into “worthy
vessels.” As a result, they have become objects of
procreation. Once properly disciplined, they will
each be assigned to a Commander’s family and will
be forced to produce a child through forced sex with
the Commander in the presence of his wife. The
goal is to repopulate the land after the great nuclear
catastrophe that has killed so many. The other