Ignatius Jacques Reilly

The novel's protagonist is an elephantine 30-year old man, Ignatius is perpetually, conspicuously, but comfortably dressed in green hunting cap with earflaps, tweed trousers, plaid flannel shirt, muffler, and suede desert boots. Ignatius has full lips, a bushy black mustache, and hauntingly large eyes, one yellow and one blue. They show that Ignatius scorns a modern world void of theology and geometry. Ignatius enjoys a Rich Inner Life based on Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, and views himself to be spinning downward on the Rota Fortunzh (Wheel of Fortune) the great medieval work. Ignatius hates the modernism of the Catholic Church, but he admires medieval piety and constantly invokes the saints.

Irene Reilly

Hard-working, arthritic, henna-haired and alcoholic, she is Ignatius' mother, who dropped out of school to help her own mother, an immigrant who spoke no English, at her seafood stand. Irene married when her...