Gringos: Analysis of Major Characters
"Gringos: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the intricate personalities and relationships of the central figures in the story. The protagonist, Jimmy Burns, is an expatriate former Marine from Shreveport, Louisiana, who navigates life in the Yucatán while searching for missing persons, which leads him into a dangerous adventure involving a gang of hippies known as the Jumping Jacks. His steadfast companion, Refugio Bautista Osorio, embodies a resourceful Mexican counterpart who stands by Jimmy in their quest for the mythical City of Dawn.
Supporting characters include Rudy Kurle, a UFO enthusiast whose disappearance adds to the mystery, and Louise, who helps Jimmy confront personal fears and ultimately marries him. Dan, the imposing leader of the Jumping Jacks, brings a violent edge to the narrative with his nefarious pursuits, while Doc Richard Flandin and Alma Kobold add layers of complexity and intrigue with their unique backgrounds and motivations. Together, these characters create a tapestry of conflict, friendship, and exploration, inviting readers to consider various cultural dynamics and personal transformations within the rich backdrop of the Yucatán.
Gringos: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Charles Portis
First published: 1991
Genre: Novel
Locale: Mérida and elsewhere in Yucatán, Mexico
Plot: Adventure
Time: The early 1990's, in the season of Christmas and the New Year
Jimmy Burns, the protagonist and narrator. A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, this former Marine military policeman who saw combat in Korea is now an expatriate, residing at the Posada Fausto in Mérida, in the Yucatán peninsula. Jimmy earns his living as a free-lance teamster and as an occasional tracer of lost persons. At one time, he also was a dealer in illicit Mayan artifacts. He accepts what he believes to be a routine job hauling supplies to an archaeological site, but it leads him into a jungle quest for two missing persons and a confrontation with the Jumping Jacks, a gang of dangerous hippies.
Refugio Bautista Osorio, Jimmy's stalwart friend and Mexican counterpart, a jack-of-all-trades. Refugio teams with Jimmy in his search for the mystical City of Dawn, a search to which the middle third of the novel is devoted. He fights bravely, and lethally, at Jimmy's side in the climactic battle against the Jumping Jacks. Thereafter, he dates all occur-rences as either before or after the night he and his gringo friend killed the “pagans.”
Rudy Kurle, an investigator of extraterrestrial visitations. He spouts pseudoscientific babble about landings of flying saucers around the world and believes the City of Dawn to be a landing site for visitors from outer space. He takes voluminous notes, which he guards jealously. When he wanders off down the river and disappears, he becomes one of the missing persons Jimmy Burns must find.
Louise Kurle, supposedly Rudy's wife and assistant, a helpful young woman with a degree in human dynamics. She is a social worker without portfolio; it is simply her nature to help everyone. Louise eventually reveals that she is Rudy's sister, not his wife. The subterfuge is a device to avoid unwanted advances from the gringos of Mérida. She helps marriage-shy Jimmy to overcome his fears, and they are married by the end of the novel.
Dan, the leader of the Jumping Jacks, an aging biker and white supremacist. He is burly, bearded, and dressed “like a wrestling act” whose costume has “not quite worked out.” He and his gang seek a mystical leader known as El Mago in the City of Dawn. On the way south, he has picked up a female runaway called Red and kidnapped a Mexican boy. He and his two lieutenants—toughs with shaved heads and vacant eyes—eventually are shot to death by Jimmy and Refugio while atop a Mayan temple.
Doc Richard Flandin, a self-styled expert on Mayan culture. He affects Frenchness but grew up in Los Angeles. For forty years, he has been working on his mammoth study of Meso-American civilization, and he takes a perverse delight in the neglect with which academic Mayanists treat his work and theories. Early in the novel, he announces that he is dying of prostate cancer but, after acquiring a young female admirer, he seems no longer to have any inclination to die, or even to be ill.
Alma Kobold, the invalid widow of a talented but neglected photographer of Mayan temples. The bitter, wheelchair-ridden, chain-smoking Frau Kobold also resides at the Posada Fausto. Despite—or, perhaps, because of—Jimmy's many kindnesses to her, she has for many years been sending him anonymous hate letters. She is the cause of the debacle at the City of Dawn, because she wrote an anonymous letter to a flying-saucer newsletter prophesying the appearance of El Mago at Likín (the City of Dawn), a hilltop ruin across the river in Guatemala that she and her husband had photographed many years earlier.
Red, a young girl traveling with the Jumping Jacks. She turns out to be LaJoye Mishell Teeter of Perry, Florida, a runaway for whose return a reward of two thousand dollars has been offered. After the Jumping Jacks gang is broken up, LaJoye—characterized by Jimmy as a girl who too easily gets into cars with strangers—is returned to her father.
Beany Girl, another Jumping Jack. She is a tall, slovenly woman who horrifies Jimmy by urinating while in his sight only moments after they meet. He meets her again much later; she is cleaned up, wearing makeup, and using the name Freda. She has become the live-in girlfriend of one of his old temple-robbing colleagues. Gallantly, Jimmy does not expose her.