# Poetry — Character guide

> Key figures in Poetry by James Weldon Johnson.

- [Moses](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/moses.md): Moses stands between a God who speaks in thunder and a people who chode with him the moment Pharaoh tightens their burdens. He protests his own inadequacy — 'Lord, you know I'm slow of tongue' — yet goes down anyway, rod
- [Noah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/noah.md): Noah preaches repentance with his long white beard flying while the crowd jokes that he's got water on the brain. He builds, he warns, he is mocked — and when the flood comes, the same sinners who pleaded at the hull are
- [Pharaoh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/pharaoh.md): Pharaoh looks at Moses and asks, 'Who is this Lord? I know all the gods of Egypt.' His power is real — overseers, drivers, six hundred chosen chariots — and his heart hardens with each plague until the Red Sea closes ove
- [Jesus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/jesus.md): Jesus prays 'not as I will' while the three disciples doze, then endures Pilate's washed hands, the purple robe, the crown of thorns pressed down. The poems return to him as 'my gentle Jesus,' 'my darling Jesus' — intima
- [Satan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/satan.md): Satan opens with a compliment — 'Eve, you're surely good looking' — and works his way from flattery to the forbidden fruit with a devilish little laugh. He is less a cosmic adversary than a conversational one, and the po
- [Death](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/death.md): Death waits in a shadowy place with his pale white horses until God's voice breaks like thunder and calls his name. He gallops down past suns and moons, and though his arms are icy, Sister Caroline smiles — he looks to h
- [Sister Caroline](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/sister_caroline.md): A devout soul whose death becomes a summons, she is the beloved the Lord sends His angel to carry home in Go Down Death.
- [Sam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/sam.md): A plantation character in dialect poems.
- [Adam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/adam.md): The first man, shaped from clay by a lonely God who stoops and breathes into him the breath of life in The Creation.
- [Gabriel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/gabriel.md): Angel who blows the trumpet on Judgment Day.
- [De Little Pickaninny](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/little_pickaninny.md): A sleeping child in a dialect lullaby poem.
- [Lize](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/lize.md): A woman addressed in plantation dialect poems.
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/mother.md): Mother of the young warrior in a poem of loss.
- [Brudder Possum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/brudder_possum.md): A possum character in a dialect animal poem.
- [Eve](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/eve.md): First woman created from Adam's rib in The Creation.
- [Lawd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/lawd.md): God addressed in dialect prayer poems.
- [Bird](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/bird.md): A bird addressed in a dialect poem.
- [Venus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/venus.md): Goddess of love appearing in a classical poem.
- [Mary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/mary.md): Mother of Jesus present at the crucifixion.
- [Father Abraham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/father_abraham.md): Biblical patriarch addressed in a poem.
- [Simon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/simon.md): A character in a biblical poem.
- [Daddy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/daddy.md): Father figure in a dialect poem.
- [Ole Eph](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters/ole_eph.md): A character in a dialect poem.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_13_se/characters