Had to profile the main characters in the book Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for my developmental psychology class. The quotes have the page numbers next to them. Hope this helps anyone who has to read the book.

1. Of love and
Other Demons
Psy-9
1

2. Father Cayetano
 Full name: Father Cayetano Alcino del Espiritu Santo Delaura y Escudero (pg 77)
 Age: 36 (He was 12 when he arrived at the seminary (pg 99)
 “He was intense and pale, and had spirited eyes and deep clack hair with a streak of
white at his forehead. His rapid breathing and feverish hands did not seem those of a
happy man.” (pg 55)
 “Quick intelligence, good dispositions, and strong character” (pg 100)
 “Delaura was aware of his own awkwardness with women.” (pg 76)
2

3. “When I stand and contemplate my faith and see the
path alongs which you have led me.” (pg 126)
 Delaura dreams of Sierva overlooking a window while eating a cluster of grapes, before
he’s even met her (pg 75)
 Father Cayetano was put in charge of Sierva’s exorcisms (pg 120)
 Father Cayetano is stripped of his position and is sent away to become a nurse at the
Amor de Dios Hospital, a hospital for those with leprosy
 He feels sexually attracted to Sierva Maria (pg 88, 117,127)
 Cayetano would sneak away to see Sierva (pg 123)
3

4. “ . . . But never achieving his confessed desire
to contract leprosy.” (pg 146)
 He would recite poetry to Sierva and they would sleep together at night
 Cayetano never tries to escape with Sierva or take matters into his own hands until the
end, by that time it is too late (pg 146)
 “the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her” (pg 125)
 Cayetano goes to find Sierva Maria, but is captured before he could help Sierva escape,
he spends the rest of his life at the leper’s hospital (pg 145)
 “Sierva Maria waited for him in vain.”
 It can be said that Father Cayetano was possessed by “the most terrible one of all”, the
demon known as “love” (pg 118)
4

5. Sierva Maria
 Full name: Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles
 The meaning of Sierva is slave or servant
 Her African name was Maria Mandinga, Mandinga means magic/spell
 Age: 12
 “She had her father’s thing body, however, and his irremediable shyness, pale skin, eyes of
taciturn blue, and the pure copper of her radiant hair.” (pg 12)
 “. . . was born, premature and puny. She looked like a bleached tadpole, and the
umbilical cord wrapped around her neck was strangling her.” (pg 42)
 Her hair was promised to the saints until her wedding night
5

6. “The last memory he had of Sierva Maria was her crossing the
gallery in the garden, dragging her painful foot, and disappearing
into the pavilion of those interred in life.” (pg 61)
 The slaves were Sierva’s true family (pg 12, 27)
 “Sierva Maria learned to dance before she could speak, learned three African languages at the
same time, learned to drink rooster’s blood before breakfast and to glide past Christians unseen
and unheard. . .” (pg 42)
 When sent to the convent the slaves befriend Maria (pg 65)
 The Marquis brings people to see if they can cure Sierva (pg 50)
 Sierva is taken to the Convent of Santa Clara
 Sierva acts out whenever the nuns tried to remove her Santeria necklaces
 “The greatest obstacle to knowing her was her habit of lying for pleasure.” (pg 110)
6

7. “She, like so many others, would die of the
cruelty of the exorcism.” (pg 115)
 While at the convent Sierva is locked in a cell (pg 68)
 Father Tomas de Aquino knew that Sierva was speaking in a different language, not
possessed by demons. He died before he could help prove Sierva was not possessed. (pg
131-135)
 “Her skull shaved by a razor . . .” (pg 146)
 “On the twenty-ninth of May, having lost her will to endure any more . . .”
 “The warder who came in to prepare her for the sixth session of exorcism found her dead of
love in her bed, her eyes radiant and her skin like that of a new born baby. Strands of hair
gushed like bubbles as they grew back on her shaved head.” (pg 147)
7

8. Marquis
 Full name: Don Ygnacio de Alfaro y Duenas
 “He was a funereal, effeminate man, as pale as a lily because the bats drained his blood
while he slept.” (pg 9)
 “He grew up showing undeniable signs of mental retardation, was illiterate until he
reached his majority, and loved no one.” (pg 34)
 “He always believed he loved his daughter, but the fear of rabies obliged the Marquis to
admit to himself that this was a lie for the sake of convenience.” (pg 16)
 The Marquis is told that Sierva Maria is possessed by a demon and he agrees to take her to
the Convent of Santa Clara (pg 55 ,57, 60)
8

9. ““She will be a whore. If God gives her life
and health.” (pg 42)
 “He was tormented by guilt for having abandoned her to her fate in the
courtyard of slaves.” (pg 110)
 “I have lost Sireva.” “It’s your fault. You did everything you could to lose her.”
 “He sent word that she should forget her anger and come home, so they
might at least each have someone to die with.”
 Sierva Maria died alone
 “All that remained of him-a skeleton eaten away by Turkey Buzzards-was
found two summers later on a path leading to nowhere.” (pg 142)
 Turkey Buzzards are also known as Turkey Vultures
9

10. Bernarda
 Full name: Bernarda Cabrera
 Bernarda means “brave bear”
 Cabrera originates from villages in Spain meaning “the place of the wild animals”
 “She had been an untamed mestiza of the so-called shopkeeper aristocracy: seductive,
rapacious, brazen, with a hunger in her womb that could have satisfied an entire barracks.”
 “Her mother hated her from the moment she nursed her for the first and only time, and
refused to keep the baby with her for fear she would kill her.” (pg 42)
 “It was Bernarda who realized that the profitable business was not slaves but flour, although in
reality the greatest profits lay in her incredible power of persuasion.” (pg 43)
 Bernarda was the brains behind “. . .the largest smuggling operation of the century.”
10

11. “But I was no longer in any condition to
kill anybody.” (pg 141)
 Bernarda had a lover named Judas and was introduced to different kinds of drugs
 It took her days to realize that “she had not seen Sierva Maria in some time”
 “She locked herself in her room with honey and cacao, and when she emerged two
weeks later she was a walking corpse.” (pg 108)
 Bernarda told the Marquis how she and her father planned to trap the Marquis with her
pregnancy
 “She did not have the heart to take the final step planned with her father, which was to pour
laudanum in his soup so they would not have to suffer his presence.” (pg 141)
 Bernarda blamed everyone for her misfortune instead
11

12. Judas
 Full name: Judas Iscariote
 The disciple Judas Iscariote betrayed Jesus to the chief Sanhedrin priests in exchange for 30 silver
coins
 2 meters and 3 centimeters tall
 Bernarda met Judas at a bullfight “wrangling a fierce bull with his bare hands, almost
naked, and unprotected” (pg 21)
 “enormous, with seal-colored skin, a rippling torso, narrow hips, graceful legs, and beautiful
hands” (pg 22)
 Bernardo bought him for 250 gold pesos, though he remained a free man
12

13. “Judas became a thief, a pimp, an
occasional sodomite. . .” (pg 46)
 Would have sex with Bernarda (pg 23)
 Judas introduce Bernarda to different kinds of addictive substances:
 Coca leaves (powerful stimulant and anesthetic)
 Opium (used to produce heroin)
 turpentine (damages lungs and central nervous system)
 Peyote (a hallucinogenic compound like LSD)
 “He fought three galley slaves in a dispute over cards and was beaten to death with a
chair.”
13

14. Dominga
 Full name: Dominga de Adviento
 “A formidable black woman who ruled the house with an iron fist
until the night before her death. . .” (pg 11)
 “Tall and bony, and possessed of an almost clairvoyant
intelligence.”
 “Became a Catholic without renouncing her Yoruban beliefs. . .”
 Dominga was Sierva’s mother
 “Dominga de Adviento suckled her, baptized her in Christ, and
consecrated her to Olokun. . .” (pg 42)
 taught Sierva how to “defend herself from abusive animals and
predatory men.” (pg 64)
14

15. Of Love and
Other Demons
Psy-9
15