The Presentation of the Commander in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Presentation of the Commander in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The commander can be seen as a man torn between two worlds, he was one

of the founders of Gilead yet still enjoys and yearns for the

pleasures of the old society he managed to break. It can be seen as '

he has made his bed and now he must sleep in it'. The commander is

cool and collected on the surface but underneath he is bitter and

corrupted for the world he has managed to create. I believe the

commander secretly longs for the world to be as it once was and this

is why he savours his time with Offred because she may remind him of

life before Gilead; it is also ironic how both these characters felt

under the surface an anger and repression of Gilead and they both

wanted to break free but on the surface when they played scrabble with

each other they are calm and to a certain extent sophisticated,

between the characters there is certain amount of sexual and power

play.

The commander tells Offred that he believes that the reason why the

State of...