Villains, Victims; Same Difference

Reading The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, I was particularly stricken by the eerie similarities existing between the narrator and her Commander.

Firstly, we begin with their situation. The Commander’s passive role and acceptance (even enjoyment) of Gilead’s society casts him as “villainous” in the novel. However, Offred admits to playing a similar role before, even hinting to the fact that she enjoyed the freedom her apathy and inaction gave her.

(“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”)

Secondly, their respective relationships with power. In Atwood’s work, the Commander’s most notable interactions with Offred demonstrate that he enjoys showing her kindness. He patronizes her, provides her with reading materials, and eventually parades her around Jezebel, because, as Moira notes, he enjoys it. However, Offred similarly enjoys wielding her own power over both the Commander and other men in the story. One of the passages that most clearly demonstrates this is when she muses, “I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me. It’s like thumbing your nose from behind a fence or teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach. . . . I’m ashamed of myself for doing it. . . .Then I find I’m not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.”

Yet another similarity found between both characters is their craving for a taboo relationship in Gilead. Both the Commander and Offred yearn for the transcendent sort of companionship that has been outlawed by the state. In the Commander’s case, he searches for understanding and a physical/emotional connection with his handmaids. Offred, for her part, finds herself drawn to Nick. She even appears to be content in the society once they begin sleeping together.

Lastly, the man and woman shared illicit relationships outside of marriage. The Commander claims that since Serena Joy cannot understand him nor fulfill his need for an intelligent emotional connection, he is forced to search for it in his handmaids. Offred criticizes this condescendingly, despite the fact that she, too, took part on an affair with Luke.

Having pointed these resemblances out, I must now address the issue of why the author might have created her characters in such a way. I believe Atwood meant to show that circumstances determine how we act, and that people who might at first appear “villainous” or “evil” are in fact not as different from those who seem to be “victims.”