The Characters
The major characters in The Comedians are developed in terms of their varying degrees of personal and political commitment. The clue to the characterization of Brown can be found in the novel’s title. Brown is a comedian in the French sense of “actor,” and as such, he is another of Graham Greene’s uncommitted protagonist/narrators who take up roles and discard them as if they were masks. The quintessential man alone, Brown has no family, no country, and no real home. Born in Monte Carlo of a British father and a mother of uncertain nationality, Brown is educated at a Jesuit college, where he wins prizes for his Latin composition. For a time, he thinks he has a religious vocation (“As other boys fought with the demon of masturbation, I fought with faith”). Yet after a particularly successful visit to a casino, which is followed less than an hour later by the loss of his virginity in the Hotel de Paris, Brown drops a five-franc roulette token into the collection bag at Mass, an indiscretion which leads to his departure from the Fathers of the Visitation.
The mature Brown is convinced that he has no allegiance and no belief: “The rootless have experienced, like all others, the temptation of sharing the security of a religious creed or a political faith, and for some reason we have turned the temptation down.” His love affair with Martha is characterized by a lack of commitment. He cannot believe that Martha loves him. Tormented by suspicion and jealousy, he often responds to her gentleness with anger and believes that they “were less lovers than fellow-conspirators tied together in the commission of a crime.” Even when Brown, who genuinely despises Papa Doc’s regime, risks his own life to take Jones to the rebels and thereby to play a small role in the anti-Duvalier cause, his political commitment is problematic. By taking such a course of action, he also conveniently rids himself of a supposed rival for Martha’s affections.
Jones, too, is a comedian, although of a lesser order than Brown. Both men are adept at role-playing, and they share an inability to commit themselves to any significant course of personal or political action. Brown recognizes Jones as a kindred spirit: “Those of us who spend a large part of our lives in dissembling, whether to a woman, to a partner, even to our own selves, begin to smell each other out.” “Major” Jones understands nothing of jungle warfare. Yet when finally forced, in real battle and in deadly earnest, to play the commando leader he pretended to be, he does not shrink from it. Although he is compelled by circumstances to act this final role, his self-sacrifice as he holds off the enemy so that Henri Philipot and his band of rebels can escape adds a significant and positive dimension to his character.
The third figure in this triumvirate of ethical postures is Smith. Smith is the spiritual antithesis of Brown, his idealism is the counter to the hotel owner’s cynicism. Yet Brown admires Smith’s ability to dedicate himself to a cause, just as he admires Doctor Magiot’s unflagging faith in Communism. Late in the novel, Brown muses: “We admire the dedicated, the Doctor Magiots and the Mr. Smiths for their courage and their integrity, for their fidelity to a cause.” A defeated presidential candidate in the 1948 election won by Harry S. Truman, Smith ran on the issue of vegetarianism. In vegetarianism, he and his wife find not merely a diet but also a philosophy and a universal remedy for all the violence and cruelty...
(This entire section contains 695 words.)
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in the world: Meat and alcohol cause acidity in the human body, acidity causes passion, and passion is the cause of war. Although an idealist, and perhaps an overly naive one, Smith is not a comic figure. In the morally desolate world of Haiti, Smith and his wife stand out because of the strength of their commitment and compassion. After the failure of their mission in Haiti, Smith comments to Brown, “Perhaps we seem rather comic figures to you.” Brown is sincere when he replies, “Not comic. . . heroic.”
Characters Discussed
Brown
Brown, the narrator, a part-Englishman from Monaco who has inherited a hotel in Haiti. Jaded, cynical, and detached, Brown has returned to Haiti in his late fifties because he has no real home and the hotel is all he owns. After run-ins with François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s secret police and after he has betrayed his friend Jones and his mistress Martha through his misplaced suspicion of them, he escapes from the fear-ridden country to the Dominican Republic, where he becomes a partner in a mortician’s concern.
“Major” Jones
“Major” Jones, a former theater manager in his late forties who pretends to have been a war hero. A man sought by the police in several countries, he is nevertheless very likable, because he has a kindness about him and always makes people laugh. Tricked by Brown into joining the cause of the resistance against Papa Doc, he dies heroically in an effort to allow his fellow rebels to escape.
William Abel Smith
William Abel Smith, an elderly, idealistic vegetarian who has come to Haiti because he believes that avoidance of meat will neutralize destructive passions and because he wishes to start a Haitian vegetarian institute. Having run on the vegetarian ticket in the 1948 election, he is accepted as a former presidential candidate by the naïve authorities and even granted some credibility. His attempts to help people usually backfire disastrously, as when he gives beggars money that is immediately snatched by the secret police, but he is instrumental several times in helping Brown.
Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith, Smith’s wife, as idealistic as her husband. She is devoted to Smith and is even more likely than he to take immediate, direct action when she perceives injustice.
Martha Pineda
Martha Pineda (pih-NAY-dah), Brown’s mistress. Married to a South American diplomat who knows about the affair and tolerates it, she is torn between her love for Brown and her attachment to her son Angel. As emotional and committed as Brown is restrained and detached, Martha is pulled back and forth between commitments until the end of the novel, when it becomes clear that she will follow her husband, who has been transferred, and will no longer see Brown.
Dr. Magiot
Dr. Magiot, an elderly Communist doctor who is committed to people rather than causes. He reappears throughout the action to do what he can to alleviate suffering, but at the end he too is betrayed and killed by the supporters of Papa Doc. His last letter, received by Smith after Magiot’s death, urges Smith to join the committed, not to “abandon all faith.”
Captain Concasseur
Captain Concasseur, an officer in the Tonton Macoute, Papa Doc’s secret police. Like his colleagues, he wears black sunglasses to maximize his effect of terror. Concasseur enjoys torturing and destroying, but his fun terrorizing Brown is broken up by the Smiths. Concasseur eventually is killed by the rebels, before they are killed by other members of the Tonton Macoute.
Henri Philipot
Henri Philipot, the young nephew of a slain Haitian minister. He gives up his writing of obscure verse to join the rebels. He survives to tell of the death of Jones and the others.
