Characters
- Mendoza, the narrator, is a "good machine". She obeys her masters except when her heart, mechanical though it may be, says otherwise. Mendoza does not actually know her real name, having been addressed only as "daughter" in her family. The Inquisition calls her Mendoza, the surname of the woman who pretended to be her mother.
- Joseph, the Facilitator who "recruited" Mendoza for the Company, is an ancient operative, a sly old fox who mistakenly believes the world has no surprises left for him.
- Nicholas Harpole is a tall, intelligent, devout Englishman with a dark past. He is reputedly the natural son of some unknown noble, raised by foster parents and supplied with a good education by his mysterious father. Although a man of his time he has unusual ideas which, if shared with the wrong people, are dangerous both to him and to them. In this he is at least 200 years ahead of his time. He speaks several languages, both Classical and contemporary. When not working for Sir Walter he spends his time in intense study, turning the pages of his books with machine-like regularity as he absorbs the text. He seems superhuman in some respects, more like the Company cyborgs than the people he works for. As the saga unfolds, Mendoza and Joseph discover how different he really is.
Read more about this topic: In The Garden Of Iden
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)