Handmaids Tale - The Importance of Nick in the novel

Authors Avatar

Handmaids Tale

                                     

                                   The Importance of Nick in the novel

Nick is presented as the commander’s chauffeur and the commander’s wife’s gardener. He ‘ has a French face, lean, whimsical, all planes and angles, with creases around the mouth where he smiles’.

Nick is portrayed as an ordinary and harmless character, he is socially excepted in the Gileadean society, receives respect and freedom in contrast to the Handmaids, although his status isn’t high in comparison to the commander and his wife.

Nick receives everyday luxuries that Handmaids crave for, a sense of freedom and most importantly the value of privacy.

Nick is a mysterious dark stranger who Offred is attracted to; he acts as Offtred’s rescue from the restricted and humiliating world of Gilead.

Nick is a great significance to Offred, he symbolises love and most importantly reality for which Offred longs for. 

In the novel men control the society outwardly, but the women stay

together and support each other. There is empathy between women of all the classes, though they have varying status they are all secondary citizens.

Women make the best of what they can and stay supportive. There are few attractive male roles; Nick and Luke are the only ones who are genuinely kind-hearted and brave.

Nick acts subversively in his role, he isn’t controlling and demoralising to Offred, he sees her as a special unique person. There is a strong forbidden attraction that has begun between Nick and Offred.

Offred and Nick then meet many times, without Serena’s knowledge. Offred believes she may be pregnant by Nick, and she feels relief to have for once a genuine human relationship.

On the day that Serena confronts Offred with evidence of adultery and calls her a ‘slut’, Nick, purportedly an operative for the Eyes and double agent for Mayday, sets up a fake arrest and has her spirited away in an Eyes van, to a safer Glieadean free society.  He provides the chance of reality and normality.

When Offred first enters the Commander’s household, she notices Nick, who is polishing the staff car; soon afterward, he regularly stares at her, shows off his muscles, whistles, and displays cockiness that contradicts his later importance in her life. As Offred’s lover, Nick listens dispassionately to her recital of past history and emotional outpourings.

When Offred has arrived back from the ceremony she goes back to her bedroom, here Offred has the luxury of her privacy which is very rare for the Handmaids, Offred lying in bed ‘buttered... like apiece of toast’ feels restless and frustrated she gazes out at the moon and remembers her past life and thinks of Luke, she longs for him, ‘I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued’. Offred is deprived from the significant value of possession. She longs for security and wants to be held again like Luke held her. She wants to be reminded of her lost identity. Offred feels the need to possess something she wants to feel superior and important, ‘I want to steal something’ She goes down to the sitting room in the dark, she perfectly conscious that she is in the wrong ‘this is entirely illegal’ however she enjoys the challenge, tension and anticipation, she feels in control ‘I like this. I am doing something, on my own’. She takes a withered daffodil from the vase. She unexpectedly meets Nick, who has come to give her a different secret message from the commander. In the dark room there is a strong sense of sexual attraction between them, this creates an exciting atmosphere because everything is so forbidden and dangerous. They embrace unexpectedly and passionately. ‘He puts his hands on my arm, pulls me against him, his mouth on mine.’ Offred resists the temptation, ‘too much rush, too much risk. Nick fulfils her wishes and desires of being touched, ‘It’s so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily’ Luke enables Offred to feel wanted again like Luke made her feel in the past life.

Join now!

Nick provides a sense of reality and reminds Offred of what it was to be like when she was in love with Luke. Luke who was  also once forbidden much like the Commander and Nick are now is, Luke is replaced by Nick, In Offred’s mind Nick symbolises Luke, her past love as he was also forbidden, he was already married, at the beginning of their relationship it was an act of adultery. They met in hotel room’s much like the meeting of Nick in his room. Married man or not, she loved and lusted after Luke, just as Offred ...

This is a preview of the whole essay