Character Clues

Character Analysis

Location

Captain Fellows doesn't like responsibility and tries to avoid it. It mars his happiness, and that he won't tolerate. Not. At. All. Returning to his bungalow when we first meet him, he's singing merrily, and Greene tells us the following:

He was borne up on a big tide of boyish joy—doing a man's job, the heart of the wild: he felt no responsibility for anyone. In only one other country had he felt more happy, and that was in wartime France, in the ravaged landscape of trenches. (1.3.2)

Not what you expected, right? You were expecting him to say the United States because there he could go to Disneyland. Well, not so fast. Mickey Mouse was around, but the theme park wouldn't exist for a couple more decades. Imagine that—a world without Disneyland. Shudders.

Captain Fellows has an idealized myth about himself and his place in the world—he's a rugged foreigner living in a plantation down by the river, "at home everywhere" (1.3.2). He lives in a romantic universe ordered in his own mind.

Trench warfare couldn't bring him down, but when he returns home and finds that his daughter is hiding the priest—you can bet your ride on Splash Mountain that he's a little irked.

Speech and Dialogue

"You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth—that God knows nothing." (2.3.186)

So speaks the lieutenant. Clearly he doesn't think much of religion, but we knew that already. What we learn with these brief statements is that the lieutenant doesn't see religious people as unique individuals, but as a class of people who are the same in their unending ignorance. He's not just an authoritarian murderer; he's condescending too. He also seems to fancy himself something of a teacher, in a tragic sort of way. He doesn't think his interlocutor will learn, but he presents the lesson anyway, like a teacher from the Black Lagoon.

Actions

The lieutenant is a complicated character, no more evident than when he releases the priest (unaware that he's a priest) from prison and sends him off with a five-peso coin so he'll not starve. Even the priest is astonished and calls his pursuer a "good man." And he means it. The lieutenant's a pretty ruthless dude, but he actually cares about the people he serves—at least when he's not killing them to trap the priest.