The Moon and the Bonfire: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Moon and the Bonfire" features a complex array of characters who embody various responses to the themes of loss, identity, and the struggle between personal roots and broader societal challenges. The unnamed narrator, who returns to his Italian village after achieving wealth in the United States, reflects on his past as an illegitimate child and a poor laborer, confronting the disconnection he feels from his former life. Key figures include Nuto, a wise carpenter and embodiment of social justice, whose refusal to leave the village contrasts starkly with the narrator’s journey. Cinto, a peasant boy, represents the narrator's youthful aspirations and serves as a reminder of their shared hardships. Valino, Cinto’s father, illustrates the destructive power of poverty and despair, while Sor Matteo, the estate owner, symbolizes the fleeting nature of status and wealth. The three daughters of Sor Matteo reveal that social position does not guarantee happiness, with their tragic fates highlighting the precariousness of life. Finally, Nora, the narrator's relationship in the United States, underscores the emptiness he associates with his experiences there. Overall, the characters create a rich tapestry reflecting the interplay of memory, home, and the existential search for meaning.
The Moon and the Bonfire: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Cesare Pavese
First published: La luna e i falo, 1950 (English translation, 1952)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Gaminella and neighboring villages in Italy
Plot: Neorealism
Time: The late 1940's and, in retrospect, the period between World War I and World War II
The narrator, an unnamed man who grows up in a small village in the Piedmont of Italy, goes to the United States, and, as the novel opens, returns to his Italian village as a wealthy man. The narrator, a forty-year-old bachelor, reviews his life on three levels: his youth as an illegitimate child and as a poor farm laborer, his early manhood as a successful but rootless man in the United States, and his return to Italy and the scenes of his childhood. His return forces him to confront the personal loss that he feels because he cannot fit back into the village life that he knew in his youth.
Nuto (NEW-toh), a carpenter. To the narrator, Nuto represents the wisdom rooted in the life of the villages and hills of the Piedmont. He is three years older than the narrator, with piercing eyes, emotional intensity, and consuming concern with social justice; he is unable to bear injustice and cruelty. He represents what the narrator would have been if he had stayed in his village. On one hand, Nuto refused to leave the Piedmont and expand his horizons by facing the challenges of the outside world; on the other, he retained his sense of place and ancestral heritage, which the narrator has lost.
Cinto (CHEEN-toh), Valino's son, a peasant boy. Tense, wary, and crippled by hard work and a poor diet, Cinto, who lives on the farm where the narrator grew up, reminds the narrator of himself as a boy. The narrator feels close to Cinto as he remembers his own yearnings to experience the wider world when he was that age. He befriends Cinto and tries to show him that there is hope for change and for a better life.
Valino (vah-LEE-noh), a poor sharecropper, an old, angry man whose sons, except for Cinto, were killed in war. His life was blighted by poverty and hopelessness, and he turned into a silent, embittered abuser of his family. In an insane rage, he kills the women of his family, tries to kill Cinto, and then hangs himself. He represents another possible life that the narrator might have lived if he had not escaped from poverty and ignorance.
Sor Matteo (maht-TAY-oh), the owner of the estate of La Mora, where the narrator went to live at roughly the age of thirteen, after leaving his sharecropping foster family. La Mora provided a port for the narrator that opened on the world. Sor Matteo is a gentleman who does not work the land himself but keeps close account of La Mora's business. Although Sor Matteo is the grandest man in the narrator's small world, his status cannot protect him from old age and unmanageable daughters. He becomes old and helpless, and La Mora is broken apart and sold off.
Silvia, Irene,(ee-REH-nay) and Santina (sahn-TEE-nah), three daughters of Sor Matteo. As the narrator is entering young manhood, these beautiful, rich young women show him that wealth and social position fail to guarantee security and happiness. One of the daughters dies of typhus and one of an abortion; the last one is executed as a fascist spy by the partisans in World War II.
Nora, the cashier at a diner in Oakland, California. The narrator worked at the same diner and evidently lived with Nora. This is the only relationship he discusses in any detail. The sterility of their relationship symbolizes to him the meaninglessness of existence and the lack of substance of life in the United States. Rootless Americans created a land like the barren surface of the moon, in contrast to the richness promised by the bonfires in the fields of the Piedmont that farmers light to “wake up” the land and get it ready for another year of production.