In Margaret Atwood’s novel, Offred secretly plays Scrabble with the Commander. In Gilead, women are forbidden from reading and writing, so the game is an illicit intellectual activity as well as a private ritual between them.
The Commander summons Offred to his office after her household duties, initially presenting the meetings as harmless recreation. Their Scrabble games expose the hypocrisy of Gilead’s ruling class: the laws restrict women’s access to language, yet powerful men continue to enjoy books, conversation, and written words.
The game also deepens the novel’s central ideas about language and control. Offred’s ability to form words becomes a small form of agency, while the Commander treats the forbidden activity as entertainment and a sign of intimacy. He later gives her a fashion magazine, another prohibited text.
Readers sometimes remember the televised adaptation more vividly, but Scrabble is also central to the original 1985 novel. It is not poker, chess, or checkers; those games do not carry the same connection to literacy and forbidden language.