Chief Sergeant Bouaffesse is largely a stereotype of the violent, ignorant police officer, representing colonial police authority. His initial impulse in almost any situation is to attack those weaker than himself. He is a bully who can only interpret the world through the flawed lens of his own prejudices and ignorance, and he comes to the wrong conclusions about others in every situation. His hot-headedness is noted in his introduction, for the narrative states, “If he had been a vegetable, he would have naturally been a hot pepper” (28). He is often accompanied by his lackeys: police officers who inflict violence on others on his behalf.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his tendency towards violence, Bouaffesse is a satirical, comic figure, as his name suggests. “Fesse” in French means “buttock,” which is an undignified name for an important police chief. His nickname, Ti-Coca (“Lil’ Coke”), is similarly derisive, suggesting that he looks like a bottle. The reference to “Coca,” as in Coca-Cola, is also symbolically important, for this product represents the expansion of free-market capitalism. Bouaffesse, as the nickname implies, seeks to align himself with colonial power, namely French imperial power, wherever possible. Bouaffesse is a Black man from Martinique, but he understands that the more he can integrate himself within (white) French colonial structures, the more power he can wield against others. These selfish ambitions explain his declaration that he loves the Catholic Church, the French Republic, and imported French commercial products like the Peugeot 604 car.

However, elements of Bouaffesse’s ties to Martinican culture still linger. For example, he chastises Inspector Pilon for not using Creole when speaking to suspects or writing his reports, and he maintains ties to folkloric traditions, as when he brings Pilon to visit “a quimboiseur, an expert in strange deaths whom the Chief Sergeant knew and consulted” (152). Thus, Bouaffesse is a contradiction, for he simultaneously adopts French colonial practices and attempts to oppress the very folkloric traditions in which he participates.

Chief Inspector Pilon is the detective charged with investigating the death of Solibo Magnificent. He is a more complex and sympathetic authority figure than Bouaffesse. However, he is also a satirical figure because he is consistently perplexed by the “shadow of unreason” (75) that hangs over the cases in Martinique and defies his factual approach to detective work. Pilon, like Bouaffesse, is from Martinique, but he was trained “in the land of Descartes” (75), that is, the French metropole.

When he attempts to apply this Cartesian logic in Martinique, he is stymied at every turn. For instance, he is shocked when Solibo’s body becomes heavy after Solibo’s death, even as others take this development in stride, seeing it as part of the fantastical logic of events in Martinique. Even though Pilon is a tool of the French colonial state in Martinique, he seeks to become a moderating influence within that system. As Patrick notes, Pilon both “observes Frantz Fanon Day […] and screams Vive de Gaulle!” (76). This statement indicates that Pilon nominally supports the ceremonial recognition of the views of the Martinican anticolonial writer Frantz Fanon while also supporting the French imperial power of Charles de Gaulle. He is a liberal who lives “at two speeds” (76).

While Pilon does not directly participate in violence as Bouaffesse does, he nevertheless oversees it. He supervises the abject and pointless torture of Congo, and he only feels pricks of guilt after Congo dies by suicide while under his watch. When Pilon realizes, as the title of Chapter 4 implies, that the investigation itself was criminal and that the cause of Solibo’s death was supernatural, he feels remorse for his actions and tacitly apologizes to Patrick. This action suggests that redemption is possible for those like Pilon who come to understand the damage that they have caused as agents of the colonial system.

Solibo is the central figure in Solibo Magnificent, but very few concrete facts are known about him. Solibo dies in the opening passage of the novel, right in the midst of telling a story to an audience underneath a tamarind tree during Carnival. As the investigating doctor determines, Solibo has asphyxiated from within. Pilon concludes that Solibo felt increasingly obligated to suppress his storytelling ability because the culture, stories, and language that he represents no longer had an audience in the capitalized and colonized world. As a result, he “spoke to the only one who could understand him” (157), himself. When he finally had the opportunity to speak to an audience, all of the words he had been suppressing suddenly “exploded from his throat” (157), killing him.

As Solibo is dead from the opening lines of the novel, everything that is known about him is learned from the accounts of others. And, as is so often the case with eyewitness accounts, their claims about him are often contradictory. Some claim he was a happy-go-lucky person who used his storytelling to spark joy. Conchita, however, saw him as increasingly downcast, sharing his misery with the sex workers. Sidonise claims he cooked and ate sharkstew with her that afternoon, while others claim that “he ate some cod right here, noo he was alone” (148). In the face of these conflicting accounts, he remains an “enigma.”

Only a few things are confirmed by multiple witnesses: the fact that Solibo was a great storyteller and that he sold charcoal at the market. Notably, these two details are linked; charcoal is itself a declining industry on Martinique as more people begin using imported gas for cooking. On a different level, using charcoal is a traditional practice that brings literal heat and light to people, just as storytelling brings figurative light to people’s days. Thus, Solibo becomes a representation of a local tradition that is being overwhelmed and subsumed by the impact of French colonial practices on Creole language and culture.

Doudou-Ménar is a middle-aged woman who sells candied fruits in the market. Like Solibo’s charcoal-selling, making candied fruit is a traditional Martinican practice that is in decline due to the rise of cheap, imported candies from elsewhere. She despairs as she is plunged into poverty, no longer able to make a living from this custom. Overall, Doudou-Ménar is an over-the-top comic figure.

She first appears in the narrative when she seeks to raise the alarm about Solibo having collapsed under the tamarind tree. The narrative embraces an absurdist tone, describing her “immense straw hat” and her “big breasts jump[ing] up and down” (24) while she races to the police station. Once she arrives, the police turn on her until she successfully wins the intervention of Chief Sergeant Bouaffesse. She believes that having sex with him will guarantee her safety as one who is “legalized and proud” (39). However, she is quickly disabused of this notion when the police savagely beat her.

After her beating, Doudou-Ménar is revived with superhuman strength, and she uses this power to attack those who have used, abused, and oppressed her. She viciously attacks the police, permanently handicapping Diab-Anba-Feuilles before finally succumbing to her injuries.