Characters
Peter Karras, Jimmy Boyle, Joe Recevo, and Perry Angelos are four friends who grew up together in Washington. Angelos is an accountant. Boyle is a police officer. Karras and Recevo work as enforcers for a protection and loan sharking racket run by Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke has several other employees including chief enforcer Reed and advisor Mr. Gearhart. Mr. Bender runs a similar outfit to Burke. Nick Stefanos is the owner of a diner that he runs with his friend "Costa". Junior Oliver is an African American of the same age as the other boys.
Michael and Lola Florek are a brother and sister from Farrell, Pennsylvania. Lola moves to Washington and becomes a prostitute and heroin addict. Her pimp is Morgan and he has a madam called Lydia Fortuno. Eleni Karras is Pete's wife and the two have a son together, Dimitri. Karras is having an affair with a woman named Vera Gardner.
Read more about this topic: The Big Blowdown
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to come out first in the happy ending of moral uplift.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)