# Nostromo — Character guide

> Key figures in Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.

- [Nostromo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/nostromo.md): 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 o
- [Martin Decoud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/martin_decoud.md): 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 h
- [Charles Gould](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/charles_gould.md): 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
- [Emilia Gould](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/emilia_gould.md): 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 
- [Dr. Monygham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/dr_monygham.md): 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 Go
- [Captain Mitchell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/captain_mitchell.md): 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. Nostr
- [Colonel Sotillo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/sotillo.md): 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 outm
- [Linda Viola](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/linda_viola.md): 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 unretu
- [Giorgio Viola](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/giorgio_viola.md): 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
- [Don Jose Avellanos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/don_jose_avellanos.md): 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 povert
- [Hirsch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/hirsch.md): 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 tor
- [Don Pepe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/don_pepe.md): 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 f
- [Antonia Avellanos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/antonia_avellanos.md): 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 
- [Giselle Viola](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/giselle_viola.md): 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 watchfu
- [Pedrito Montero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/pedrito_montero.md): 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 Ch
- [General Montero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/general_montero.md): 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 a
- [Signora Teresa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/signora_teresa.md): 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 h
- [Ramirez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/ramirez.md): 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
- [Gamacho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/gamacho.md): 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,
- [Sir John](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/sir_john.md): A visiting English railway magnate involved in the mine's development.
- [Pablo Barrios](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/pablo_barrios.md): 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 estab
- [Hernandez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/hernandez.md): A feared bandit who later becomes a general for the government.
- [Guzman Bento](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/guzman_bento.md): A former brutal dictator of Costaguana, often recalled in memory.
- [Father Corbelan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/father_corbelan.md): A fiery, politically active priest and brother of Antonia Avellanos.
- [Fuentes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/fuentes.md): A deputy in Sulaco who collaborates with the Monterists.
- [Holroyd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/holroyd.md): A powerful American financier backing the Gould Concession.
- [President Ribiera](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters/ribiera.md): The weak, fleeing president of Costaguana.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/nostromo_se/characters