Carol Cutrere
Carol Cutrere is David's younger sister. She appears to be over thirty years old and enjoys drawing attention with her looks. Her face and lips are powdered white, her eyes are outlined with black pencil, and her eyelids are painted blue. She confesses to Val that she is an exhibitionist who craves notice. She loves to drink and dance, expecting to get her way, but despite her boldness, she is also vulnerable and lonely.
Her family is the oldest and most distinguished in the area, yet she is unpopular in the county. Years ago, she participated in civil rights activism and was arrested for vagrancy after a protest walk wearing only a potato sack. Consequently, she is banned from staying in the county overnight. The locals gossip maliciously about her, branding her as corrupt and degraded.
Carol once encountered Val in New Orleans, and when he arrives in town, she attempts to get closer to him, though he shows no interest. She lures him out under the pretense that her car needs fixing, and Val returns with lipstick smeared on his mouth and face. However, it is evident he rejected her advances. After Val's murder, Carol takes his snakeskin jacket as a memento of the wild freedom he symbolized.
Lady Torrance
Lady Torrance is likely in her late thirties but still retains a youthful figure. She is a passionate and emotional woman of Italian descent, whose mental state verges on hysteria when she is under stress. Physically tense, she relies on pills to sleep at night. Lady is also deeply lonely and bitter, feeling that she has squandered her life in a twenty-year marriage to Jabe, a man she despises. She was hurried into this marriage after being jilted by her first lover, David Cutrere. At the time, Lady was pregnant with David's child and chose to have an abortion. She harbors lingering resentment towards David, and when they cross paths again, she insists he must never return to the store.
Lady has also endured another significant tragedy. Her Italian immigrant father perished in a fire set by a mob at his orchard. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she later discovers during the play that Jabe was the mob's leader. Lady has not forgotten her father and remodels the store's confectionery to resemble his wine garden. This act symbolizes her refusal to be defeated and her determination to overcome adversity. She feels liberated through her relationship with Val and eventually becomes pregnant by him, reveling in the fact that she can bear a child.
Valentine Xavier
Valentine Xavier, a wandering musician around thirty, is described in the stage directions as possessing a wild beauty. He dons a snakeskin jacket in shades of white, black, and gray. In the bars of New Orleans, where he performed and lived a reckless life, he was known simply as Snake-skin. Val always carries his guitar, which he calls his "life's companion." Music rescues him whenever he finds himself in trouble. His guitar is adorned with the autographs of famous blues singers. A free spirit who defies conventional norms, Val's first entrance is marked by the Choctaw cry from the Conjure Man, a cry of wild intensity.
Val grew up in a place named Witches' Bayou and claims to possess extraordinary self-control. He can hold his breath for three minutes, stay awake for forty-eight hours, and go without urinating for a day. He also asserts that his body temperature is two degrees higher than normal, similar to a dog's. Leaving Witches' Bayou in his teens, he drifted to New Orleans, where he discovered that women were irresistibly drawn...
(This entire section contains 291 words.)
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to him. However, he eventually grew weary of their attention and the dissipated lifestyle he was living.
At heart, Val is a kind man with deep insights into the longings of life. He can intuit what others truly need and desire, and he knows how to provide comfort when necessary. He claims that despite living among corruption in New Orleans, he has not been corrupted. In Two River County, however, people find his demeanor sexually suggestive, even though he does nothing to encourage this impression. Because he is an artistic soul who does not conform to societal norms and engages in an affair with Lady Torrance, he becomes the target of the town's men.
Other Characters
Beulah Binnings
Beulah Binnings, the middle-aged wife of Pee Wee, engages in gossip with Dolly about local happenings and people. She plays a crucial role in the prologue, where her monologue reveals the tragic story of Lady's father to the audience.
Pee Wee Binnings
Pee Wee Binnings is a small, red-faced planter who associates with Dog Hamma. During Val's confrontation with the sheriff, he threatens Val with a knife.
David Cutrere
David Cutrere, Carol's brother, is tall and handsome but has a hardened expression. A plantation owner who married a wealthy woman, he now drives a Cadillac. Twenty years earlier, he had a romance with Lady Torrance but ended it, breaking her heart. He appears only in act two, scene one, to collect Carol, and Lady tries unsuccessfully to stop him from entering the store. During an emotional confrontation, Lady reveals that she was pregnant when he left her, a fact he did not know and claims to barely remember their affair.
Vee Talbott
Vee Talbott, the wife of Sheriff Talbott, is a heavyset, sexually frustrated woman in her forties. She is a visionary painter who claims to have been blinded by a vision of the risen Christ. She finds a sympathetic ear in Val. Vee was the first to offer Val help when his car broke down during a storm, providing him with a place to stay.
Dog Hamma
Dog Hamma, Dolly's husband and friend of Pee Wee Binnings, joins Sheriff Talbott and Pee Wee in harassing Val after he is accused of misconduct with Vee Talbott. Dog tears Val's shirt open and seizes his guitar. He is also one of the men responsible for Val's murder.
Dolly Hamma
Dolly Hamma, the wife of Dog, enjoys gossiping with her friend Beulah and seems to take delight in others' misfortunes.
Uncle Pleasant
Uncle Pleasant, a black man with Choctaw Indian heritage, hails from Blue Mountain. He wears ragged clothes adorned with talismans and good luck charms. The locals call him the Conjure Man and consider him crazy. His presence in the store frightens away the Temple sisters and Dolly. Carol knows how to communicate with him and convinces him to perform the Choctaw cry, a series of wild barking sounds. It is the Conjure Man who brings Val's jacket back to the store after his murder, and his "secret smile" is the play's final action before the curtain falls.
Nurse Porter
Nurse Porter cares for Jabe Torrance after his return from the hospital. She exhibits the false cheeriness typical of someone accustomed to caring for the dying and is mean-spirited. She and Lady quarrel when she indignantly rejects Lady's suggestion that Jabe be given a fatal dose of morphine.
Sheriff Talbott
Sheriff Talbott, Vee's husband, is a rough and intimidating man. He twice discovers his wife and Val in what he perceives as inappropriate contact. After the second incident, he questions Val and demands that he leaves the county by sunrise.
Eva Temple
Eva Temple is an elderly spinster who, like her sister, takes a keen interest in other people's affairs.
Sister Temple
Sister Temple is Eva's sibling. They are so alike that people often struggle to distinguish between them.
Jabe Torrance
Jabe Torrance is a gaunt, sickly man with a grayish-yellow complexion. After undergoing cancer surgery in Memphis, he returns home with little hope of survival. He exerts control over his wife Lady, frequently banging on the floor from his upstairs bedroom to summon her. Their mutual dislike has persisted for years. Lady married Jabe solely for his wealth. In the play's climax, Jabe shoots Lady dead and then calls a mob to kill Val.