A Confederacy of Dunces - Other Characters

Other Characters

• Santa Battaglia is an elderly woman who becomes a friend of Mrs. Reilly. The two meet through Santa's nephew, Patrolman Mancuso, and quickly become friends. She shows a marked disdain for Ignatius, suggesting that Mrs. Reilly force Ignatius to get a job and not put up with his antics. She attempts to set up Mrs. Reilly with Mr. Robichaux as a potential husband.
• Claude Robichaux is the said potential new husband—an old man constantly on the lookout for any "communiss" (sic for Communists) who might infiltrate America, and who takes an interest in protecting Irene.
• Angelo Mancuso is an inept police officer, the nephew of Santa Battaglia. After Mancuso makes several improper arrests, the sergeant in charge is angry with him, and he must somehow make a major bust to avoid being kicked off the force; he is reduced to wearing ridiculous disguises and spending time in the bus station toilets in order to arrest "suspicious characters."
• Lana Lee runs a downscale French Quarter strip club, the "Night Of Joy." She employs Darlene and Jones and runs an illegal pornographic photo ring on the side.
• George is Lana's high-school-aged partner in the pornography ring.
• Darlene is the "Night Of Joy's" goodhearted but none-too-bright stripper who has a pet cockatoo. It is Darlene's intention to better herself, moving up from getting the clients to buy watered-down drinks, to dancing and having an "exotic" routine involving her pet.
• Burma Jones is the porter/janitor for the "Night Of Joy" who resentfully holds on to his job only because the police will arrest him for vagrancy if he does not (an indignity not uncommon for African Americans in the U.S. South in the Jim Crow era). Most of the white characters tend to pay only peripheral attention to him, though his actions are central to the plot.
• Mr. Clyde is the owner of Paradise Vendors, an old man frustrated with his hot dog vendor business and his vendors' growing disrepute, a situation not at all helped by Ignatius' absurd clothing.
• Gus Levy is the owner of Levy Pants, a family business in Bywater whose best days seem gone. He prefers to visit Levy Pants as little as possible, as it reminds him of his father, from whom he inherited the business.
• Mrs. Levy is Gus Levy's wife. Having taken (and failed) a correspondence course in psychology, she attempts to apply psychoanalytic principles to her husband and Miss Trixie. She also specializes in making her husband's life miserable, often blackmailing him by threatening to show their two daughters the horrors to which Gus has supposedly exposed her.
• Miss Trixie is an aged clerk at the Levy Pants office who suffers from senile dementia. Mrs. Levy thinks she's doing a good deed by keeping Miss Trixie employed, although Miss Trixie would rather retire. Moreover, Miss Trixie is a liability to the company and repeatedly demands a holiday turkey and ham, both of which were promised to her and not given.
• Mr. Gonzalez is the office manager at Levy Pants, meek and skittish in demeanor, but fervently loyal to the company and a strong believer in its philosophy, if it indeed has one.
• Dorian Greene is a flamboyant French Quarter homosexual who puts on elaborate parties for the subculture. Ignatius tries to recruit him and his "sodomite friends" to infiltrate the army and thus "take down worldwide government" in his unsatisfying failure at eclipsing Myrna Minkoff's political endeavors.
• Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele are a trio of aggressive lesbians who run afoul of Ignatius, and who figure belligerently in the climactic French Quarter brawl.
• Dr. Talc is a mediocre college professor at Tulane University who had the misfortune of teaching Myrna and Ignatius in separate classes one semester. He still feels the effects years later.
• Miss Annie is the disgruntled neighbor of Irene and Ignatius Reilly who professes a severe addiction to headache medication due to the Reillys' constantly noisy domestic quarrels.