In The Handmaid’s Tale

1. In The Handmaid’s Tale Luke

2. Luke was the narrator's (Offred) husband prior to the formation of the Republic. She started seeing him secretly while he was still married; he then divorced in order to marry her.

3. Luke, Offred, and their daughter try to escape to Canada, but are captured. She constantly expects to see him hanged at The Wall but never sees him there and never learns his fate.

4. Themes Luke represents • Hope – Offred is always full of hope that one day she will see him again • Love & Betrayal – Offred & Luke both fell in love while Luke was still with somebody else. He’d betrayed his wife.

5. Absence & longing – His sense of absence throughout the novel causes Offred to long for him. • Past – By keeping Luke in Offred’s memory, she is able to keep her identity alive.

6. Luke & Offred’s relationship They are in love. He is has a partnership with Offred, and later they have a baby together. The affair Luke had with Offred while he was with his wife emphasises his strong feelings for Offred.

7. Luke’s significance in the text He is the most fragmented character in the text appearing briefly as a name in chapter 2, gradually taking on an identity of Offred’s lover, husband and the father of the child.

8. He is a figure whose life story stopped for Offred at a traumatic point in the past: “stopped dead in time, in mid-air, among the trees back there, in the act of falling.”

9. Offred after Luke Offred misses their caring relationship based in equality. She feels guilty when she begins her relationship with Nick. She is ashamed by her faithlessness (with Nick) to her husband Luke, but is compelled to indulge in the sole form of love available to her. Offred seems to want to move on from Luke.