What are the Eyes?

The Eyes in The Handmaid's Tale are Gilead’s secret police and surveillance force. They represent the government’s constant watching, paranoia, and control over private life. Offred never knows who might secretly be an Eye. Nick’s wink frightens her because she worries he could be an Eye, and she suspects strangers, doctors, and even Ofglen of spying on her. This sort of fear causes people to police their own behavior.

The Eyes also symbolize how Gilead turns surveillance into a way of life. Margaret Atwood fills the novel with literal and symbolic eyes: Offred notices eye imagery in mirrors, signs, badges, and even the plastered-over light fixture in her room. The secret police drive black vans marked with a winged eye symbol, and Offred’s ankle tattoo includes an eye, marking her permanently as property of the state. Offred becomes so fearful of the Eyes that she sees eyes everywhere.

The most important symbolic eye is the blank spot in Offred’s ceiling where a chandelier used to hang. Early in the novel, she thinks it looks like an empty eye socket. In this way, even the architecture of the room seems to monitor Offred. Later, she learns the previous Handmaid hanged herself there. The image changes meaning over time: the eye represents surveillance, but also the possibility of escape through death.

The Eyes are powerful partly because they create uncertainty. Nobody knows exactly who belongs to them. Even high-ranking people like the Commander fear them. At the end of the novel, men posing as Eyes take Offred away, and she cannot tell whether they are truly government agents or members of Mayday trying to rescue her. Gilead survives because people can never be certain whom to trust.

The Eyes connect to the tension between outward obedience and hidden inner life. Offred may appear submissive, but her mind remains active, suspicious, and rebellious, even under the pressure of constant surveillance.