Character Sketches in the novel- THE SHADOW KING

 Sketch the character of Hirut.

Introduction

    The main character in "The Shadow King" is a young peasant girl, likely a slave, named Hirut, whose life is the central line running through the novel. She is notable for her tenacity, independence of mind and action, and her major role within a large force of Ethiopian women who organize a military unit to battle the Italians. Hirut is a character inspired by Ms. Mengiste's great-grandmother, who was one of many Ethiopian women who fought alongside the men during the Italian war.

Hirut waits at the train station

          The story starts in 1974 in Addis Ababa. Hirut waits at the train station for Ettore to return a box to him. She is two days early. That is all we know, until we travel back in time, to the mid 1930s to find out why she has the box, her connection with Ettore, and the wide gulf in time. We also come to know she has a significant scar, from her neck to her back, which she tries to hide with her scarf. Hirut is the daughter of Getey and Fasil. When she was young girl, her parents were abused and killed by Kidane's cruel father. Hirut is meek and quiet. However, she defies Aster and Kidane in order to feel a sense of autonomy. When Kidane takes away the rifle that her father had given her before he died, Hirut grows even more rebellious. She often invokes her parents' memories as a constant source of strength.

Hirut under the wing of Dejazmach Kidane

           After Hirut's parents were killed and their land stolen, she is taken under the wing of the Dejazmach, (military commander) Kidane who was a close friend of Hirut's mother. Kidane's wife, Aster, is not pleased to have a young girl near to her age brought into the household. Hirut rooms with the cook who is known only by that name throughout the novel. Their relationship is close, but at times strained as well.

Hirut hides the gun under her bed

        The Shadow King tells the story of Hirut, a young Ethiopian woman who goes from lowly servant to proud warrior. She begins the novel as an orphan who works alongside an unnamed cook in the household of a man named Kidane and his wife, Aster. The relationships between the characters, a tangle of lust, loyalty, jealousy, resentment, tenderness emerge fittingly around a battle over Hirut's gun. This Wujigra, designed to deliver a single lethal shot with consistent accuracy was given to Hirut by her late father. He used it as a soldier in the First Italo- Ethiopian War. Once the family's most prized possession, the weapon becomes even more valuable when Italy invades Ethiopia again in 1935. Hirut hides the gun under her bed. Aster suspicious that the girl has stolen a necklace, finds the gun during one of her raids. Kidane takes it from both of them. In response, Hirut, in a surprising but convincing turn, starts stealing things from the household and burying them in a hole by the stable.

The blow comes as a relief to Hirut

      Upon discovering the trove, Aster beats and whips Hirut in a harrowing scene, the beauty and psychological precision of which distinguish the novel as a whole. The blow comes as a relief to Hirut. She welcomes the distraction from the tremor she feels seeping out of Aster and sinking into her own skin. Slowly she feels the cuts and gashes, the burn of open wounds. She is splitting into pieces. Hirut notes the frantic sorrow in her eyes, the way her mouth is chewing words to spit them out. Dust blooms as Aster drags herself over dirt as if she has forgotten the use of her legs.

Hirut to disguise Minim as the eponymous Shadow King

         Hirut joins the troop, gets her gun back and fights alongside the women, who are celebrated in rhetoric usually reserved for male warriors. When Hirut trains, the foe she pictures is Kidane. She later takes on a key role in the war when she notices that a peasant musician named Minim ("Nothing") bears an uncanny resemblance to Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia who has vanished from the country. Kidane orders Hirut to disguise Minim as the eponymous "Shadow King" in order to rally the nation's disheartened rebels. She appears beside him as his royal guard.

Conclusion

The closing scenes in the Addis Ababa railroad station in 1974 have a mystical quality in which Hirut confronts Ettore. At the same time she sees the emperor. It is a powerful scene in which Hirut's character is finally fully revealed.

Sketch the character of Ettore.

Introduction

Mengiste's narration is fluid, moving between characters, as well as forward and backward in time. Sometimes we see the same event from multiple perspectives and certain thoughts are shared by different characters. The most explicit narrative device, occasionally providing a frame for specific scenes, is a metal box that contains Ettore Navarra's most prized possessions and relics from the war. This box filled with the photographs of Ethiopians that Ettore was hired to take, as well as newspaper clippings and his personal letters has come into the possession of Hirut. Hirut's, Kidane's and Aster's unwritten memories and experiences are recorded alongside Ettore's documents.

Ettore begins to fear for his safety

Ettore is the only Italian soldier that can speak to the prisoners. He feels drawn to Hirut and tries to talk to her. They have a moment of connection over thoughts of death of their parents. Ettore begins to fear for his safety. Italy requires all Jews to be identified. They are not allowed to be soldiers. Ettore gets a letter from his father and learns that his father was from Ukraine. He realizes that he is a Jew. When the census comes, Fucelli tries to protect Ettore but then a letter from Rome says that Ettore needs to be sent to face action for his in discipline.

Ettore buries his box of memories and letters

Ettore keeps his father's letter with him at all times, reading it multiple times. Fucelli gets the letter through his most trusted Ascari soldier, Ibrahim to learn what is consuming Ettore. Once Ettore learns about his return to Rome, he buries his box of memories, letters he has written to his dad that will not make it past the filters, photos that he has taken documenting the war and photos from other photographers. He asks Hirut to keep the box for him, to get it and keep it once it is safe to do so.

Ettore ends up working as a photographer

Ettore ends up working as a photographer around Ethiopia. In the final chapters, we see him taking photos of former soldiers in his studio in Addis Ababa. There are protests once more to overthrow Haile Selassie and to get the foreigners out. Ettore thinks that he photographed the dead and the dying. He helped kill the innocent. He left his parents to their fate. This is what is on Ettore's mind when Hailu, the brother of Dawit, is now a renowned surgeon visits Ettore to tell him that it is time for Italians to leave Ethiopia. It is through him that Ettore manages to get a message to Hirut. His search for her had been futile up to that point.

Conclusion

Ettore Navarra remembers his father's words that there is no way put forward and that is the only true escape. Ettore's father writes in his last letter, telling his son not to return to Italy because the Jews are being rounded up.

Sketch the characters Kidane and Aster

Introduction

After Hirut's parents were killed and their land stolen, she is taken under the wing of the Dejazmach, (military commander) Kidane who was a close friend of Hirut's mother. Kidane's wife, Aster, is not pleased to have a young girl near to her age brought into the household.

Aster beats and whips Hirut

Upon discovering the trove of stolen articles Aster beats and whips Hirut in a harrowing scene, the beauty and psychological precision of which distinguish the novel as a whole. The blow comes as a relief to Hirut. When the violence pauses, the world spins in an unnatural quiet. There is just Aster pressing her face on the ground, sliding bwards her. Dust blooms as Aster drags herself over dirt as if she has forgotten the use of her legs.

Aster, the wife of army leader Kidane

Aster, the wife of an army leader Kidane is determined to do her part to rally and lead Ethiopian women. Hirut, orphaned and set to live with Kidane and Aster a year to the day after they suffer the loss of their only son, is made to work in the household and bunk with the family's slave, known only as the cook. When Aster searches their quarters she finds Hirut's gun, her Wujigra with five notches carried into it, marking the firemen Hirut's father shot. The gun, taken from Hirut for the coming war against Italy, is a source of conflict between the two women, as is Aster's suspicions about husband's close relationship with Hirut. Kidane had been close to Hirut's mother. Naturally, Aster must overcome the prejudice against women who desire to lead. When she takes her husband's trousers and cap as a symbol of her new leadership, she comes into conflict with Kidane who threatens violence until he sees Aster's resolve. When Aster is raped by Kidane, she feels herself "splitting" and "hovering over herself". When Hirut is raped by Kidane much later, she "watches her own spirit stand from her stained body and walk away".

Kidane awaits instructions from Haile Selassie

Kidane recruited men and collected weapons for the army. The women's job was to feed and care for the men. After the incident with Hirut, Aster put on Kidane's clothes, went out of her house and travelled for days to recruit women and collect weapons to assist. Despite fights with Kidane about this, she carried on, becoming a person of legend. Kidane awaits instructions with Haile Selassie. This is an interesting storyline.

Aster and Kidane

Aster inspired by the real life of Mana Ura who sang to Italian troops passing through the Suez Canal, sets aside expectations placed upon her as a woman, and rejects the tenets of her sexual role first defined by her near rape by Kidane on their wedding night. Kidane, on the other hand, is a man who has followed the furrow of history without question, whose sense of identity, unexamined, would be lost without his upbringing, his privilege and those roles imposed upon him by tradition.

Kidane killed in the battle

During the battle with the Italians, Fucelli and his men capture Aster and Hirut. When the women refuse to reveal the location of Kidane's camp, the soldiers strip, taunt, and rape the women. Fucelli holds them in his prison endlessly, forcing Ettore to photograph them. He distributes the photos to his men, one of which reaches Kidane. Kidane and his men wait for the opportune time to attack and destroy Fucelli. One night they sneak into the camp and release the women. Shortly thereafter, they ambush Fucelli's men, killing him. Kidane is also killed in the battle.

Conclusion

Kidane, the leader of an Ethiopian defense army, sustains his confidence by exercising domination, through sexual violence, over the women in his life, specifically his wife Aster and their servant Hirut. Both of whom build resistance to Kidane's power by adding their own division of armed women to his forces as the Italian invasion rages on. Aster is in turn abusive towards Hirut, though the two develop a complicated relationship as circumstances force them to become allies. In the play "The Shadow King," no character is completely pure. And the war is brutal. Mengiste often writes lyrically.

The Minor Characters in the novel "The Shadow King" 

Introduction

An author's skill in portrait-painting is to be judged not from his or her full-length pictures only, but from his thumbnail sketches also. While the more important characters of a novel or a play have to be drawn with elaborate care and in great detail with attention fixed on the minutiae, the minor figures have to be sketched in a few bold strokes. To make the secondary characters real and life-like is thus more difficult than to invest the principal personages with reality. The following are the important minor characters in "The Shadow King."

Minim

In the end, Minim is back in his village attending Church, adjusting once more to being nothing. He thinks of his loneness. He hears a message "Every sun creates a shadow and not all are blest to stand in the light". He will gradually return to himself, a rebirth.

Haile Selassie

He is the Ethiopian emperor. He fled to England. He is the only historical figure plagued with doubts about his own legitimacy. He is listening to Aida, feeling the betrayal in the story. Outside, the protestors are calling him a liar, gunshots of the revolution against him. He has a conversation with the dead, with Aida and Amonasro, his daughter Zenebwork. The characters from Aida ask him about memory and teach him about remembrance. He decides to don his peasant clothes, the same ones he used to escape to Britain during the war and walks to the railway station. He carries his dead daughter with him.

Colonel Carlo Fucelli

The Italian army that Kidane's army faces is led by Colonel Fucelli. His army is formed by a group of Italian men and men from Ethiopia, the Ascari. Fucelli is a sadistic but, good at leading men in war. He sets up his base on a hill and builds a prison. It appears that the prison only has two cells. But the location is chosen in such a way that the prisoners can be thrown from the edge of a cliff. Fucelli wants to see how prisoners die mutilated. He likes to capture it in picture.

Fifi

Fifi is a renowned prostitute of the Italian armies. She was at Fucelli's camp when the attack happened and helped clean him up, hiding his indignity from his men. Fifi's real reason for being at the camp was she acted as a spy. She used her knowledge of what was happening at the camp to send information to Kidane.

The Shadow King

Hirut noticed that Minim (a name that means "Nothing) looked like Haile Selassie. After Selassie left the country, the people felt deserted and lost hope. Aster and Hirut had the idea to use Minim to encourage the soldiers and other Ethiopians to continue to fight. They trained Minim to behave like the emperor and posed as his personal guards. They rode with him into battle.

Conclusion

The minor characters in "The Shadow King" do not play an important part in the story. Nevertheless, they are interesting persons and their portraiture bears witness to the author's skill in characterization.