Entertaining God | Characters & Character Analysis

Entertaining God Characters

John

A 15-year-old black boy. He resembles his father, with very black skin a broad, flat nose and a backward-sloping forehead. John is very lean and has a gentleness to his face. He has been raised by a mother who hates his appearance and tries to disassociate herself from their blackness. John has become fixated on a gorilla at the Bronx zoo. He has no interest in his absentee father and looks upon him slightly condescendingly with impatience and pity. John cries and suffers due to the gorilla's captivity and forces him to escape. John makes him his "savage idol" and pays homage to him, presenting him with burnt offerings. John is killed by the gorilla.

John's father

Is about to be killed by a tornado; in the last moments of his life, he thinks about his first wife and their son. John's father is very black with the same broad, flat nose...
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