Characters
Main characters
- Baroka - The Balè or reigning chieftain of Ilujinle, a Yoruba village in the realm of the Ibadan clan. A crafty individual, he is the Lion referred to in the title. At sixty-two years of age, he has already sired sixty-three children.
- Lakunle - The progressive and absurdly arrogant Westernised teacher. He is in his twenties.
- Sidi - A beautiful, yet somewhat egotistical village girl who is wooed by both Baroka and Lakunle. She is the Jewel in the title.
- Sadiku - The sly chieftess of the Balè's harem.
- Ailatu - Baroka's favourite, but not so towards the end of the drama due to an altercation over Baroka's choice to take a new wife.
Supporting characters
Village girls, a wrestler, a surveyor, schoolboys, his assorted consorts and various musicians, dancers, mummers, prisoners, traders and so on.
Read more about this topic: The Lion And The Jewel
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)