The Handmaid’s Tale Characters: Full List & Analysis

Who drives the story

Main characters

Offred

The narrator, a Handmaid stripped of her name and assigned to the Commander's household as a 'two-legged womb.' She survives by hoarding memories of her husband and daughter, and ends her story stepping into a black van, unsure whether it means freedom or death.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 2: The Ceremony and the Study; Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick; Part 4: The Black Van
Themes:: Language as control and contraband; Freedom to versus freedom from; Memory and storytelling as survival; Complicity and small betrayals

The Commander

Offred's master, a possible architect of Gilead who breaks his own laws to play Scrabble with her and take her to Jezebel's. His previous Handmaid hanged herself; he is later identified, perhaps, as Frederick R. Waterford, purged for harbouring an enemy agent.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 2: The Ceremony and the Study; Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick; Part 4: The Black Van
Themes:: The body as state property; Language as control and contraband; Complicity and small betrayals

Serena Joy

The Commander's Wife, a former televangelist who campaigned for women's domesticity and now lives it under house arrest of her own ideology. She brokers Offred's affair with Nick, then betrays Offred when she finds the costume and makeup.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 2: The Ceremony and the Study; Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick; Part 4: The Black Van
Themes:: Complicity and small betrayals

Nick

The Commander's chauffeur, living above the garage, smoking forbidden cigarettes with a grin that has too much teeth in it. He becomes Offred's lover and, possibly, her rescuer—the epilogue suggests he was Mayday.

Appears in:: Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick; Part 4: The Black Van

Moira

Offred's college friend, a lesbian in a regime that criminalizes her, who stages the boldest escape in the book. Caught near the Canadian border, she chooses the brothel Jezebel's over the Colonies.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 2: The Ceremony and the Study; Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick

Ofglen

Offred's shopping partner and a secret Mayday member who saves a condemned man pain by knocking him out first. She hangs herself before the Eyes can arrest her; her replacement warns Offred that everything is a trap.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 3: Mayday, Jezebel's, and Nick; Part 4: The Black Van

Aunt Lydia

The trainer at the Red Center whose slogans—freedom from, not freedom to—supply the regime's philosophy. Her voice keeps interrupting Offred's story like a conscience turned inside out.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets; Part 2: The Ceremony and the Study
Themes:: Freedom to versus freedom from

Also in the story

Supporting characters

Luke

Offred's husband, whose earlier divorce makes her an 'adulteress' under Gilead's retroactive laws. He vanished during their failed escape to Canada; Offred never learns his fate.

Appears in:: Part 1: Red Cloths and White Bonnets

How they are connected

Key relationships

Offred The Commander
The narrator, a Handmaid stripped of her name and assigned to the Commander's household as a 'two-legged womb.
Serena Joy The Commander
The Commander's Wife, a former televangelist who campaigned for women's domesticity and now lives it under house arrest of her own ideology.
Serena Joy Offred
She brokers Offred's affair with Nick, then betrays Offred when she finds the costume and makeup.
Serena Joy Nick
She brokers Offred's affair with Nick, then betrays Offred when she finds the costume and makeup.
Nick The Commander
The Commander's chauffeur, living above the garage, smoking forbidden cigarettes with a grin that has too much teeth in it.
Nick Offred
He becomes Offred's lover and, possibly, her rescuer—the epilogue suggests he was Mayday.
Moira Offred
Offred's college friend, a lesbian in a regime that criminalizes her, who stages the boldest escape in the book.
Ofglen Offred
Offred's shopping partner and a secret Mayday member who saves a condemned man pain by knocking him out first.
Luke Offred
Offred's husband, whose earlier divorce makes her an 'adulteress' under Gilead's retroactive laws.
Aunt Lydia Offred
Her voice keeps interrupting Offred's story like a conscience turned inside out.

Go deeper

The Handmaid’s Tale themes & symbols

The body as state property · Language as control and contraband · Freedom to versus freedom from · Memory and storytelling as survival

Themes explained

Read the full The Handmaid’s Tale summary

The full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.

Open the summary