What it is to be human (Nature and Balance III)

In the past week's reading, I finally found one sentence in The Handmaid's Tale that truly stood out to me more than the rest. The commander, while with Offred in the club says, "But everyone's human, after all" (248). He states this in response to Offred's questioning about the club and its legality. I enjoyed reading this statement because it was the first time we ever saw the commander say something truly meaningful for our lives as well. It was the first time I saw a glimpse of a man with intelligence in this future apocalypse world. As I read this statement, I thought of what the commander could have meant. He could mean that humans, by nature, need to live without restriction, that we are not meant to live in a cage, as we are animals. He could have meant that freedom is a human's only choice, and so disobeying laws was the only way someone could feel  they were still human. Perhaps it was too much for me to expect of the commander. He goes on to state that "Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, its part of the procreational strategy. It's Nature's plan" (249). Now I know that he is going to say something about women and how they are some sort of variety for men or something close to that. I was disappointed. The fact that he said "Nature's plan" also irritated me because in a previous Blog-post, I had stated that nature created the balance between man and woman and he has taken that statement and distorted it to make it seem that nature has created woman for man. He continues to say, "Women know that instinctively. why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day" (249). This is possibly the worst statement in the book so far. The commander has essentially stated that by nature's law, women are toys for men to play with. The men buy new toys when they get bored with the old ones. I think he has misunderstood nature's laws because he is used to living in this future world where they do not teach what nature had once created, and what we had forgotten. He also is completely ignorant of the rules of balance. Balance is non-existent in this world, this apocalypse. This is why this world, I believe, will fall apart, if it isn't falling apart already.