Comparison of Carlo and Mandras

In the novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, both characters Mandras and Carlo are presented very similarly yet at the same time entirely different. Carlos attitudes towards war are very dissimilar from Mandras’ for example their reasons for joining the war. Carlo joins the war in search of love, in hopes that in the army he would find a soldier whom he could love unconditionally and would be willing to sacrifice his own life out of pure love for this man even if the love is not reciprocated (and he finds this in Francesco). He hopes that by joining the army, the notion of ‘love between men’ will conceal his homosexuality and be regarded as purely plutonic rather than homosexual. Mandras however, joins the army in order to prove his worthiness to both Pelagia and her father, Dr Iannis and to gain their respect and honour so that he can marry Pelagia. Both men have different reasons for enrolling in the army yet both of them join in search of a way to be accepted or fit in.
Their attitudes towards loved one also vary. Carlo’s love for Francesco is shown through his letters and presented as absolute admiration. Even when Francesco goes mad from the war and ends up deliberately shitting himself (page 115) Carlo’s unquestioning love for Francesco remains as he even makes mittens for him. His love again is shown by how the death of Francesco affects him. He cradles Francesco’s head in his arms, the action of what a mother would do to her child showing how nurturing Carlo is towards him. He also ends up crying a very emotional reaction again showing how deeply Carlo has been wounded by Francesco’s death and the extent to which Carlo loved him. On the other hand, Mandras attitudes to love are different to Carlo’s. While Carlos love is obviously true, the love between Mandras and Pelagia is presented to us as more lust than love. We first meet Mandras in the eyes of Pelagia where she describes his beauty; de Bernieres uses similes to compare him to a dolphin and uses biblical reference to emphasise Madras as a pure, holy and god like figure. There is very little emotional connection between the two and their love is purely physical attraction. Mandras also does not treat Pelagia with the same kindness as Carlo devotes to Francesco. When he returns from the war he is expecting a hero’s welcome but gets the complete opposite. He victimises Pelagia by forcing her to read out the letters against her will when it is clearly upsetting her and causing her deep pain to do so showing that he does not care about her feelings. This is further emphasised by how demanding and aggressive he becomes as the letters get shorter.
Both characters have been affected by war in similar ways in that both experience loss of loved ones however the way they lose them is different. Carlo loses Francesco in the battles of war where as Mandras loses Pelagia due to miscommunication of the fact that he doesn’t know how to read or write (again this shows how false their love was as if it were true Pelagia would have known this simple fact). Although they both undergo loses, Carlo comes out of war strong and even more determined to find love while Mandras comes out completely diminished to nothing more than an infant who cannot think and act for itself, relying on the care of those around him. Not only this, but his appearance has greatly changed from that of a beautiful boy to an unrecognisable stranger resembling a hermit. Although they both experience loss, they are different in that Carlo’s is much more tragic as there was little he could do to prevent it while Mandras’ is almost entirely his fault as he practically drives Pelagia away from him.
De Bernieres presents Carlo and Mandras in different ways. Carlos is presented as an outsider through the chapter titles “L’omusessuale” which not only emphasise his alienation by being homosexual but by being Italian the Greek love between men will not apply to him either, therefore he is not accepted anywhere. For half the novel we only see Carlo from his letters showing us that he is a reflective and emotional character. Through his letters de Bernieres is able to provoke sympathy towards Carlo as he writes about his suppression of his homosexuality and how he feels isolated and alienated within not only society but his own family. Mandras on the other hand is presented first through the eyes of Pelagia as beautiful and physically attractive but there is no description of personality, emphasising that Pelagia is only focusing on his appearance. This suggests to us that there is nothing more to Mandras than his beauty. As the novel progresses we come to dislike him as he becomes the aggressor and very sadistic towards Pelagia who he supposedly loves. The fact that the readers feel no emotional connection towards Mandras yet feel deep empathy and compassion towards Carlo shows us just how different these two characters are.