Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

Some people in this novel are pure evil, but even the good ones have their little demons. For example, Doc, Peekay's ultimate hero and one of the gentlest people in the book, still has his problems with "Doctor Bottle," as Peekay's mom puts it. But we learn that Doc is self-controlled and that he takes care of Peekay by the way he does his drinking:

In the first year we spent together I never once witnessed him drunk, though when I arrived just after dawn for my music lesson I often had to wake him, whereupon he would stumble outside to retch and cough. Then he would come to sit beside the Steinway, his blue eyes red-rimmed and dulled from the previous night's whiskey, his long fingers wrapped around the enamel bug of bitter black coffee I had made him on the Primus. Doc never talked about drinking. (10.5)

In contrast, Lieutenant Borman is pretty much a big bad guy through and through, and his actions definitely show it:

He would hit the African with a hard punch into the gut, doubling him over. "Stand up, you black bastard, we got to get the filth out, we-got-to-get-it-out!" He would hit the prisoner again and again in the same spot. "Vomit out the filth, make clean inside!" (13.87)

Just reading that makes our skin crawl. Anyone who acts in such a terrible manner leaves little doubt as to just how despicable they truly are.

Location

Many of Peekay's best friends are the guys he met in prison, but there's a big difference between the characters who live there and those who just visit. Geel Piet is a great example of how prison life influences a character:

Geel Piet had no morality, no sense of right or wrong. He existed for only one reason: to survive the system and beat it. To gain more from it than he was entitled to. He had long since realized that, for him anyway, freedom was an illusion. He had accumulated years of sentences—he wasn't quite sure or no longer cared how many—and was realistic enough to know that he was unlikely to survive the system at his age and with his deteriorating health. (11.21)

Being a part of the prison system has totally shaped Geel Piet's character.

Physical Appearances

Being a boxer, Peekay depends a lot on being able to size up an opponent based on their physical appearance. At the first boxing match he ever witnesses, he sees a giant of a man go up against his pal Hoppie:

His heavy eyebrows were like dark awnings above coal-black eyes. A growth of several days made a bluish stubble over his chin and gave him a permanently angry look. His nose was almost as flat as Bokkie's, and one ear looked mashed. (5.99)

He learns, however, that appearances can be deceiving to the untrained eye:

The giant wobbled for a split second, then crashed unconscious to the canvas. (6.73)

Total knockout.