Character guide

Almitra

supporting

Almitra moves through Orphalese as its seeress, the one who recognized Almustafa twelve years before and drew him out of silence into speech. When the people press him for wisdom before he sails, it is her asking that turns his farewell into a sermon on love, and her blessing that closes the day. Her silence at the harbor sets her apart from the crowd's single cry: she measures what his leaving costs rather than what his words gave, and that ache is the book's quiet counterweight to its own eloquence.

Almustafa

major

Also known as The Prophet, Claude Bragdon The Prophet Almustafa

Almustafa has lived twelve years as a stranger among the people of Orphalese, loved and needed but never quite at home, and his ship's arrival splits him between joy and a wound he cannot hide. He calls departure a skin torn off rather than a garment cast aside, and he answers the crowd's hunger for teaching even as he admits he was only ever a listener. His willingness to speak before he goes is the engine of the whole book: every sermon on love, work, and death is also a farewell, and his longing to give something worthy of the people who stop their harvests to hear him keeps the early and middle chapters taut.

Beauty

minor

A personified concept discussed as a guiding force in life and art.