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Characters Discussed

Samba Diallo, a young man of the Diallob aristocracy who is perceived by all to represent the

future of his people. For this reason, the older generation of the Diallob people struggles toinfluence the course of his life. As a child, Samba evinces a profound sense of the spiritual

beauty of Islam and of the Koran, the words of which he repeats without understanding them.When it is decided that he will attend a French school, he becomes enamored with the Westernalphabet, philosophy, and scientific method, all of which suggest that everything can be

expressed, analyzed, and mastered. Undertaking university studies in philosophy in Paris, he

suffers deeply over the loss of the spiritual plenitude he had known before his contact with the

West. As he discusses philosophical, spiritual, and political issues with those he meets, herealizes that in the course of his ambiguous adventure he has internalized aspects of both

cultures and is no longer completely at ease in either. Recalled to Africa by his worried father, he

seems to seek out his own demise and apparently experiences a return of faith at the moment ofhis death.

Thierno (tee-EHR-no), a teacher of Islam in the Koranic school and spiritual master of theDiallob people. The fragility and stiffness of his aging body make a vivid contrast with the

ethereal joy in his soul. Thierno declines to help the Diallob decide whether to send theirchildren to the colonial schools. With his preferred successor, Samba, away in Paris, he

designates Demba, a pragmatic youth of peasant stock, whose first official act is to allow the

Diallob children to attend the French school.

The Knight, Sambas father, so dubbed by a school friend of Samba (Jean Lacroix) because ofhis stature and noble bearing. Although he works at a civil service post in the colonial

administration, his contact with the West has not altered his deep faith. Indeed, he asserts that

Africas urgent mission is to restore a sense of spirituality to an impoverished Western

civilization obsessed with scientific and technological progress.

The Chief of the Diallob, the secular leader of his people, brother of the Most Royal Lady, and

Sambas cousin. The Chief represents a middle ground, a locus of indecisiveness in an era in

which important decisions must be made. A lucid and profoundly human character, he clearlyfeels inadequate to play the role assigned him by his historical era.

The Most Royal Lady, Sambas aunt and the Chiefs sister. Sixty years old but looking twenty

years younger, she radiates the beauty and strength of the Diallob aristocracy. Her principal rolein the novel is to exhort her people to attend the French school. In an eloquent speech, she

acknowledges that the consequences of this decision cannot be predicted; precious elements of

cultural or spiritual heritage may be lost, but the Diallob must move forward.

The Fool, a friend of Thierno. His daring gaze, strange clothing, odd speech, and marginalizedposition in Diallob society have earned for him this title. His reasons for having visited the

West are unclear, but he seems to have fought in World War I and to have been permanently

traumatized by his experiences. The West he describes to Thierno is a cold, hard, mechanized,

dehumanized world, and he opposes any contact with it. He is grief-stricken at Thiernos death,

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and his efforts to force Samba to pray on the holy mans grave precipitate Sambas apparent

death at the end of the novel.

Paul Lacroix (lah-KRWAH), a colleague of the Knight. His principal importance is as aparticipant in a conversation with the Knight as the two men observe a magnificent African

sunset; that sight causes them to reflect on the end of the world. The men represent tworadically different belief systems. Lacroix fears the end of the world, feeling that it could only

signify human failure and would end the infinite continuation of enlightenment and scientificprogress. The Knight looks forward to the end of the world as the moment when all questions

and uncertainties will be resolved.

Paul Martial, a middle-aged Protestant pastor. A sympathetic and enlightened Westerner, he

discusses philosophy with Samba. As a young man, he dreamed of going to Africa as amissionary. He perceived such a mission as only a spiritual exchange between cultures and

would have refrained from the Westerners frequent practice of combining proselytizing with

gifts of medicine and technology.

Lucienne Martial, Pauls daughter, a university classmate of Samba. She advocates a political

(Marxist) solution to the social crisis in Africa. Samba admires her fervent commitment,

observing that she has followed the road to Damascus in the opposite direction from that taken

by the apostle Paul, that is, away from her Christian upbringing. Samba does not experience asimilar conversion. He recognizes that for him the resolution of conflict lies in faith rather than

in politics.

These are the ambiguous, charismatic shapers, those with connections to theessence of history. In each case, a real-life character moves into a relationship witha mythic character, and that movement is the movement of the hero's becoming apart of history, of culture. The real-life character is the hero who is in the process ofbeing created: Samba Diallo. Myth is the stuff of which the hero is being created.History is the real, the past, the world against which this transformation is occurring

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and within which the hero will move. The real contemporary world is the place fromwhich the hero comes and to which the hero will return. The image of Africa, then, isthat rich combination of myth and history, with the hero embodying the essence ofthe history, or battling it, or somehow having a relationship with it by means of thefantasy mythic character. It is in this relationship between reality and fantasy, theshaped and the shaper, that the story has its power: Samba Diallo with the Fool.

This relationship, which is a harbinger of change, occurs against a historicalbackdrop of some kind, but that backdrop is not the image of Africa: that image isthe relationship between the mythical character and African/European history. Thefantasy character provides access to history, to the essence of history. It is theexplanation of the historical background of the novels. The hero is the person who isbeing brought into a new relationship with that history, be it the history of a certainarea. Here is where reality and fantasy, history and fiction blend, the confluencethat is at the heart of story. The real-life character, the hero, comes into arelationship with that mythic figure, and so the transformation begins, as the heromoves through an intermediary period into history. It is the hero's identification withhistory that makes it possible for us to speak of the hero as a hero. This movementof a realistic character into myth is metaphor, the blending of two seemingly unlike

images. It is the power of the story, the centre of the story, as Samba Diallo movesinto the Fool.

Sambo Diallo is unable to identify with the soulless material civilization he finds inFrance, where he is sent to learn the secrets of the white man's power.

Is it Samba Diallo a cultural heritage with multiple facets for a peul? The meeting of

European civilization is it the fruit a threat or a contribution. The control of the culture of

the colonists more than small French shows a true depersonalization consequence of a

skilful washing of brain .It was the method of the colonizer to put an end any heritage

cultural of Africa. The double formation of Diallo Samba of Diallob under a Large royalguardian of the tradition, of the chief of Diallobe and at the Koranic school with the main

intransigent Thierno whose rigor equalized his passion to transmit to the students : love of

the crowned religion, the tender with Allah, a side and the intellectual and vocational

training of the other or his critical spirit was formed to make the share of the things and

refuted the obscurantist traditions according to one Cartesian vision of the world. Under

all its contradictory influences Samba Diallo does not find balance necessary to make the

share of the things .It has too much interest concerned there and the honor of the whole

generations rests on shoulders our Parisian naturalized Diallob. the adventure of Diallo

Samba which is a spiritual fight and a intellectual fight can be rather dramatic even tragic

as in the case of Samba Diallo which loses the faith like exaggerated in search of identity.

The character of the insane one who kills Samba Diallo is the repairing act to preserve thetradition on the one hand and a wretched act of insanity which withdraws from mankind a

thinking head. The wisdom of large royal could make send Samba to the school of the

whites, the action of insane arises as an act of wisdom to thus get rid of this agent become

double living a dangerous ambiguous adventure for clean his society