Big Bellybutton
Big Bellybutton is a little boy with blue-black skin, sharp eyes, hair scorched rusty-read and frazzled buy the sun, a body that was already tough and muscular. He never stayed calm, he had to be working his hands – to fiddle with chalk, slates, pens, scratch his feet, rub his nose – at least anything to “participate in the world”. The Teacher casually asked the boy the stickiest, trickiest questions and never missed the opportunity to push or thump him. Nevertheless, Big Bellybutton hasn’t lost the ability to smile. He also was good in calculating, he was the first who was able to count to ten although it was hard for him to scratch the number of his slate. He was regarded as the Master of Nasty Things from the Creole Wildwood, all students respected him, and even when the Teacher banned to talk the Creole language he didn’t obey; he stayed faithful to his culture.
The Teacher
He saw himself as a missionary, whose destiny is to enlighten all those barbarian children with their rowdy Creole manners. But he liked his work very much: “It was clearly – the sugar syrup of his life”. He believed in ideas he proclaimed about the great and powerful European people who have the mission to educate primitive races and the “duty of civilization” to make this world better. He walked like a senator and everybody respected him like a senator. When he was walking down the street people looked at him, greeted him, and crossed the street to touch his hand. He liked that fame and didn’t pay much attention listening to all those uneducated people who longed to talk to him.
The Little Boy
He is the author of the book and the main character, all events that happen in the story we see though his eyes. He longed to go to school because all his brothers and sisters did. But when he finally gets there he is confused – as it turns out, his native language and traditions are banned and he has to speak the language he barely understands. His class is divided into teacher’s pets and the rest, he doesn’t like school anymore but there is no way back – he wanted at so much and he hasn’t any moral right to give up.
Mam Ninotte
She is the mother of the main character. She is an uneducated woman of middle age who has five children. She is always busy with her household chores and when her youngest son continually asks to go to school she finally gives up and sends him first to the nursery school and then to the real school. It was a great relief for her but then her son started come home late and to lie her. She was disappointed but she could do nothing with it. She loved her son very much and she tried to give him all the best because she believed that her younger son is intelligent and he will have a good education.
Monsieur le Directeur
Everybody was afraid of him and his office was the place no one wanted to get to. He has a great power and when a student did something wrong he could hit him, kick him but he never spoke to children except of reprimand. When he came across everything died away: runners stop running, jumpers stop jumping, chatterboxes stop chattering. He hated the Creole language and became mad every time he heard students speak it. He was the image of endless power of social law.
