Cass Kinsolving

Cass Kinsolving, an expatriate, struggling American painter in the throes of alcohol addiction. A Southerner who helped destroy the furnishings in a black family’s house years earlier, Cass is guilt-ridden and depressed, conditions that led to his alcoholism. He struggles, with little success, to comprehend the symbolic implications of his dreams and fantasies, such as being locked away for a horrible crime that he cannot remember and being constantly surrounded by black people. By playing “trained seal” to Mason Flagg in Sambuco, Italy, however, Cass assumes the slave’s role and thus does penance for his racial oppression, as he does by helping an Italian peasant, the odor of whose dwelling he directly connects to the odor of the dwellings of impoverished black families in the United States. Finally, by killing Mason for his rape (and, Cass believes, murder) of a peasant girl, Cass overcomes his guilt and oppression: Mason represents the excesses of “Yankee” American materialism and sexual violence. Cass, who is symbolic of the American South, can then disavow alcohol and achieve spiritual peace and artistic success.

Mason Flagg

Mason Flagg, a millionaire American obsessed with pornography and sexuality. His name suggests America (Flagg), particularly the North (Mason, as in Mason-Dixon Line). He is abusive of women but not capable of murder. In Cass’s words, he is not “evil . . . just scum.” Presented only through the descriptions of Peter Leveritt and Cass Kinsolving, Mason develops as a victim of an uncaring, distant father (devoted only to making films and attending parties with celebrities) and of an excessively doting mother who becomes alcoholic because she is neglected as a spouse. Mason is dismissed from high school for seducing a thirteen-year-old imbecile. He buys and controls women and male friends via his wealth. In Sambuco, Mason conflicts with and manipulates Cass, an obsessive Southern artist who hates Mason’s greed, superficiality, and abusiveness. After Mason rapes Francesca, Cass’s girlfriend, the North-South conflict represented by the characters erupts, and Cass kills Mason in the mistaken belief that Mason killed Francesca. Never a sympathetic character, Mason serves as an illustration of the excesses produced by the corruption of the values and culture of the North.

Peter Leveritt

Peter Leveritt, an American lawyer originally from Virginia but practicing in New York. He observed some of the events in Sambuco. Peter visited Mason, a school friend of years before, when Mason was in Sambuco, arriving the evening before Mason was killed. Uncertain of the reality of what happened (officially, Mason raped an Italian peasant, Francesca Ricci, and killed her, then killed himself out of guilt), Peter visits Cass in Charleston, South Carolina, several years later, to try to resolve his doubts about the official account of the Sambuco events and end his own sense of guilt about Mason’s death. Cass explains the truth about the events in Sambuco, allowing both characters to finally accept the tragic unavoidability of Francesca’s death at the hands of the village idiot, Saveria; of Mason’s guilt of rape; and of Cass’s understandable errors of believing that Mason killed Francesca and of then killing Mason.

Luigi Migliore

Luigi Migliore (lew-EE-jee mee-lee-OH -reh), a Fascist humanist policeman/philosopher who meets and befriends Cass. Luigi saw his younger brother killed by a British bomb during World War II, and he has never since stopped questioning the nature of a universe in which such a thing could happen. Highly educated by individualized reading, particularly in philosophy, Luigi has had to accept a policeman’s status and thus identifies with Cass’s professional frustration, as well as sharing his spiritual suffering and...