Comparing Carlo and Mandras

In the novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres, Carlo and Mandras are contrasting characters. They are differentiated through their attitudes towards the war and their loved ones, through how war has affected them and through how De Bernieres presents them.

Firstly, both characters have different outlooks towards war. Carlo joined the military to find someone to love and he thinks that in the army ‘love between men’ would seem like platonic love and not homosexuality. In a way, he joins seeking acceptance by society. Mandras joined to prove to Pellagia and her father that he is worthy and brave. He wants to gain honour and respect from them and wants to show that he is more than just a fisherman so that he can marry Pellagia. They have both joined for different reasons however, a similarity between them is that they don’t join to help their country, but they join to try to be accepted.

Their attitudes towards their loved ones are very different. Carlo’s love is shown in the l’Omossesuale letters, his letters show he is a reflective and emotional character. Carlo has complete unconditional love for Francesco, even when Francesco “shits himself deliberately” and starts to lose his mind, even when Francesco’s “head had been blown away”, Carlo still loves him and “gather(s) him into (his) arms”. It shows that Carlo truly cares for Francesco whether alive or dead. In contrast to Carlo, Mandras isn’t a very emotive and caring character. Mandras and Pellagia’s love is described as lust more than love. When Pellagia first sees Mandras, she describes him as a “human dolphin” and “a man like Adam” suggesting physical perfection. She looks at him “with pleasure that was entirely aesthetic”, this clearly shows that there is no true love for Mandras, she is simply “transfixed by his beauty”. The word transfixed suggests that she is under a spell and cannot look away however her love for him is merely physical attraction. Furthermore, Mandras doesn’t care for Pellagia as much as Carlo does for Francesco. When he comes back from the war, he forces Pellagia to read the letters with an aggressive and violent attitude. He voluntarily hurts the person he says he loves.

Both men had different experiences during the war, however they were both changed by all the traumatic experiences that war throws at you. When Mandras comes back from war he is a “horrible and wild stranger” to Pellagia, showing the extent to which war can change you; he is unrecognizable. He is described by Pellagia as “quite motionless” and “fluttering and trembling” which contrasts with how she described him before the war as “one with sea, so much like fish”. It clearly shows the consequences of war on a man, it also suggests he might be shell-shocked. De Bernieres has used negative verbs to describe Mandras after the war to portray a man who is broken both physically and mentally. However, Carlo has positively been affected by war. He leaves the battlefields a stronger and more determined men. War has caused them both to lose a loved one but the reader sympathises much more for Carlo’s loss of Francesco because it was in no way his fault and he couldn’t do anything about it whereas Mandras is the one who drove Pellagia away. He was violent towards her which creates resentment towards this character, to contrast with the sympathy we have for Carlo.

De Bernieres has presented Mandras and Carlo very differently. Carlo is presented through letters in the l’Omossesuale chapters. We feel strong sympathy for Carlo as the letters talk about how he has been alienated by a narrow-minded society. De Bernieres presents Mandras as a physically beautiful character but doesn’t allow the reader to have any true emotional connection with him. The reader even feels resentment for this character as he is aggressive towards Pellagia, the women he supposedly loves. This shows how different Carlo and Mandras are.