Character guide

Nostromo

major

Also known as Gian' Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, Captain Fidanza

Nostromo commands the cargadores of the Sulaco docks, a Man of the People who disdains to lead but rules from within, prized by the Europeans precisely because he seems above their intrigues. His immense vanity and his obscure sense of his own greatness drive him to attempt feats no one else will, yet he resents being used as a tool by men he privately scorns as hombres finos. When the revolution forces the silver and the fate of the town onto his shoulders, that private pride becomes the hinge on which the whole story turns.

Martin Decoud

major

Also known as Don Martin Decoud, Decoud, young Decoud

Decoud drifts through Sulaco's drawing rooms as a detached, cosmopolitan observer, mocking the patriotism of men like Don Jose while secretly loving Antonia Avellanos and half-despising himself for it. His intellect is his only weapon, and he knows it, which is why he is so unnerved when he is sent out into the black calm of the Placid Gulf on a desperate errand with Nostromo, where no intelligence can help him. His complacent superiority and his sudden, unwilling commitment make him the story's most modern and most exposed consciousness.

Charles Gould

major

Also known as Don Carlos Gould, Mr. Gould, Charley, Carlos Gould

Gould is the foreign proprietor on whom Sulaco's material hopes rest, a man of rigid principle who believes the mine can redeem the country by giving it something solid to build on. His marriage to Emilia is affectionate but increasingly shadowed by the mine, which he serves with a devotion that looks less like business than like fate. As the revolution closes in, his determination to save the silver at any cost becomes the engine of the novel's central crisis.

Emilia Gould

major

Also known as Mrs. Gould, Dona Emilia, Emilia

Dona Emilia presides over the Casa Gould as its gracious and observant mistress, the confidante of priests, doctors, and revolutionaries alike, and the one person in Sulaco who seems to understand what the mine is doing to the people around it. Her compassion for the town's suffering and her growing loneliness within her marriage give the novel its moral center. As the political storm gathers, her clear eyes and unspoken grief register what the men of action cannot or will not see.

Dr. Monygham

major

Also known as Doctor Monygham, the doctor, the English doctor

Dr. Monygham moves through Sulaco's society with a snarl and a limp, a physician whose past torture under Guzman Bento has left him with a horror of hanging and a carefully cultivated air of contempt. He adores Emilia Gould in secret, with a pitying tenderness he can never speak, and his hatred of the mine's moral cost is as sharp as his loyalty to the people caught in its wake. When the crisis comes, this apparent misanthrope proves capable of the coldest and most necessary courage in the book.

Captain Mitchell

supporting

Also known as Joseph Mitchell, Joe Mitchell, señor Mitchell

Captain Mitchell bustles through Sulaco's crises with the self-importance of a man who believes he is at the center of events, signing papers, giving orders, and narrating his own heroism to anyone who will listen. Nostromo manages him with weary contempt, winding the old seaman around his little finger while fearing his indiscretion. His fussy vanity is comic, but it also measures the gap between the Europeans' self-image and the real forces moving beneath them.

Colonel Sotillo

supporting

Also known as Sotillo, the disconcerted Sotillo

Sotillo commands a barracks in the port during the chaos of the Monterist revolt, posing as a masterful man while his authority rests on bayonets and bluster. His hunger for the San Tomé silver and his fear of being outmaneuvered drive him to interrogate and torment the helpless Hirsch, revealing a cruelty that is as petty as it is theatrical. He matters because his piratical ambition turns the port into a trap for everyone trying to move treasure or truth through it.

Linda Viola

supporting

Also known as Linda, Viola, Linda Viola

Linda grows up in the shadow of her father's old revolutionary ideals and her sister Giselle's prettier, softer charm, working in the Viola household above the Sulaco harbour. Her love for Nostromo is absolute and unreturned in the way she needs, and her sharp tongue and dark eyes carry both adoration and a readiness to be wounded. She matters because her passion makes visible the human cost of Nostromo's legend, and her jealousy will shape the domestic tragedy that shadows his public triumph.

Giorgio Viola

supporting

Also known as Old Giorgio, Old Viola, the Garibaldino, Giorgio Viola

Viola settled in Costaguana after fighting for Garibaldi, and now tends the lighthouse with his wife Teresa and their daughters, a living relic of the old republican faith. He measures every man against his revolutionary ideals, and his gruff respect for Nostromo is both a blessing and a burden, since the sailor must live up to a standard no ordinary man can bear. He matters because his moral seriousness anchors the novel's portrait of the people, and his household becomes the stage where Nostromo's private life and public legend collide.

Don Jose Avellanos

supporting

Also known as Jose Avellanos, Avellanos, the late Don Jose Avellanos

Don Jose is the venerated patriarch of Sulaco's 'honest men,' author of Fifty Years of Misrule, whose name and counsel still command respect among the province's leading families. Crippled by old age and dignified poverty, he depends on the devotion of his daughter Antonia and pours his remaining hope into the Ribiera presidency and the promise of regeneration. He matters because his open letters and quiet influence set the political stage of the early novel, and his disillusionment will measure how far the new order falls short of the ideals he gave his life to.

Hirsch

supporting

Also known as señor Hirsch, the miserable Hirsch

Hirsch deals in hides along the coast and has the misfortune to be in Sulaco when the revolution breaks, a foreigner with no protector and no courage to spare. Bound and dragged before Sotillo, he is interrogated and tormented for information he does not have, his misery becoming the measure of the colonel's theatrical savagery. He matters because his ordeal turns the abstract politics of the revolt into flesh-and-blood terror, and his fate haunts the novel's moral atmosphere long after his brief scenes.

Don Pepe

supporting

Also known as Directly Don Pepe

Don Pepe oversees the day-to-day workings of the San Tomé mine, trusted by Charles Gould and beloved by the miners, a figure of order in a province sliding toward chaos. His competence and personal loyalty to the Gould family make him the practical backbone of the mine's success, even as the silver it produces becomes the prize of every faction. He matters because his steady presence shows what the material progress of Costaguana actually costs and who pays for it, and his fate will test the Goulds' faith in the country they are trying to build.

Antonia Avellanos

supporting

Also known as Dona Antonia, Antonia, Miss Avellanos, Antonia Avellanos

Born in Europe and partly schooled in England, Antonia moves through Sulaco's drawing rooms with a stillness that makes other young ladies stand in awe of her learning and her pride. Her life is bent to 'poor papa,' Don Jose, whose passionate dream of an honourable republic she serves as secretary, nurse, and moral heir. In the early arc she is the quiet centre of the civilian party — the woman Decoud watches, and the conscience against which the men of Sulaco measure their compromises.

Giselle Viola

supporting

Also known as Giselle, old Viola, Giselle Viola

Giselle lives on the island under the lighthouse with her parents and her sister Linda, caught between Ramirez's boastful pursuit and Nostromo's secret visits to her window. She is frightened less by her father's watchfulness than by the suffocating weight of her sister's passion, and she longs for Giovanni to carry her away before the tension breaks. Her restlessness turns the Viola household into a quiet pressure cooker whose steam will reach the novel's central figures.

Pedrito Montero

supporting

Also known as Pedro Montero, Montero, Pedrito

Pedrito Montero arrives in the wake of his brother's victory at Rio Seco, installed in the old Intendencia with troopers lounging on the stairs and deputations of frightened civilians waiting for audience. He receives Charles Gould with slow dignity and lets slip his fantasy of aristocratic rank, mistaking the mine's administrator for a man he can charm or bully. His blend of vanity and menace makes him the face of the new regime — the gaudy, dangerous surface beneath which the province's real fate is being decided.

General Montero

supporting

Also known as Montero, the victorious Montero

Montero is the sword of the revolution — a soldier whose victory at Rio Seco ends half a century of hope for Don Jose's generation and installs his brother Pedrito in the Intendencia. He is felt everywhere in Sulaco as an occupying force rather than seen: patrols, clanking sabres, deputations waiting in fear. His triumph is the hinge on which the novel's middle turns, forcing Gould, Nostromo, and Decoud to gamble everything on the silver.

Signora Teresa

supporting

Also known as Teresa, Señora Teresa, Poor Teresa

Teresa keeps the Viola household at the Sulaco inn, issuing from doorways to rebuke Giorgio for his politics and his health while the engineers eat his cooking under Garibaldi's lithograph. She suppresses the twinge in her side with a twitch of her fine lips, having followed her husband from Italy to Maldonado to this flat, dusty coast for the love of liberty. Her dying anxieties — about her daughters, about Nostromo's dangerous glamour — seed the fears that will shape the Viola family's fate.

Ramirez

supporting

Also known as Mr. Ramirez, Poor Ramirez, Young Ramirez

Ramirez is the outside pressure on the Viola island, a would-be lover whose boasts reach Linda's ears and set old Giorgio walking the night with a loaded gun. Giselle dismisses him with a jesting 'He is not the man,' but the boast and the gun together tighten the atmosphere around the lighthouse. He is the small, human fuse that runs alongside the larger political one, reminding the reader that private passions in Sulaco are never merely private.

Gamacho

supporting

Also known as señor Gamacho, the enormous Gamacho, the deputy Gamacho

Gamacho rose from peddling in the campo to become a loud, corrupt deputy in Sulaco's assembly, his bulk and hairy wet face a fixture at Pedro Montero's rallies. He grins with stupid hilarity while the guerrillero speaks, a man whose loyalty is bought and whose appetites are simple: power, spectacle, and the chance to lay hands on Decoud. He matters because he embodies the mob politics and casual brutality that threaten whatever fragile order Sulaco still possesses.

Sir John

minor

A visiting English railway magnate involved in the mine's development.

Pablo Barrios

supporting

Also known as Barrios, Ignacio, General Barrios

General Barrios commands the government forces in Sulaco, a heavy, good-natured soldier whose fidelity to the Ribierist cause is unquestioned but whose energy is not. He embodies the creaking, well-meaning military establishment that must hold the province against Monterist insurrection, and his movements — or lack of them — shape the desperate calculations of Decoud, Gould, and Nostromo in the novel's middle stretch. His loyalty is real; his effectiveness is the open question.

Hernandez

minor

Also known as Hernandez the Robber, the bandit Hernandez

A feared bandit who later becomes a general for the government.

Guzman Bento

minor

Also known as the tyrant Guzman Bento

A former brutal dictator of Costaguana, often recalled in memory.

Father Corbelan

minor

Also known as Padre Corbelan, Bishop Corbelan

A fiery, politically active priest and brother of Antonia Avellanos.

Fuentes

minor

Also known as Señor Fuentes, Jorge Fuentes

A deputy in Sulaco who collaborates with the Monterists.

Holroyd

minor

Also known as Mr. Holroyd, The great Holroyd

A powerful American financier backing the Gould Concession.

President Ribiera

minor

Also known as Don Vincente Ribiera, poor señor Ribiera

The weak, fleeing president of Costaguana.

Don Juste Lopez

minor

Also known as Don Juste

A cautious, elderly politician in Sulaco.

Father Roman

minor

Also known as Padre Roman

A priest at the San Tomé mine.

Giovanni

minor

An Italian sailor or worker, possibly a minor associate of Nostromo.

Basilio

minor

Also known as the fat and sleek Basilio

The Goulds' portly and trusted butler.

Father Beron

minor

A priest involved in torture during Guzman Bento's regime.

Anzani

minor

Also known as Old Anzani, the cautious Anzani

A cautious Italian shopkeeper in Sulaco.

Leonarda

minor

A servant in the Gould household.

Dominic

minor

Also known as Dominic the Corsican

A Corsican sailor who helps Nostromo.

Marta

minor

A servant or minor character in the Viola household.

Moraga

minor

Also known as señor Moraga

A lawyer or agent for the Gould Concession.

Bonifacio

minor

Also known as poor Bonifacio

A minor character, possibly a worker at the mine.

Scarfe

minor

Also known as Mr. Scarfe, young Scarfe

A young Englishman working for the railway.

Luis

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.

Jaime Berges

minor

Also known as Don Jaime Berges, Jaime

A minor political figure in Sulaco.