Don Achille Carracci Character Analysis in My Brilliant Friend

As the neighborhood loan shark and the “ogre of fairy tales,” Don Achille is a terrifying man who moves in the shadows of Lila and Lenù’s neighborhood throughout their childhood. Don Achille is a feared moneylender who has the power to make or break families in the neighborhood—and because Lila and Lenù know that they should fear Don Achille but don’t precisely understand why, they make him into a fairy-tale monster in their minds, imagining that he lives in their building’s cellar, collecting his neighbors’ refuse and using it to fashion a grotesque living armor for himself. In a way, the girls’ childhood vision of Don Achille is profoundly symbolic—as the neighborhood loan shark, Don Achille does take from his neighbors with impunity and he uses debts and threats of violence to make himself (seemingly) invincible. Ultimately, Don Achille is murdered by an unseen assailant; Alfredo Peluso, a carpenter who lost his livelihood gambling away borrowed money, is arrested for the violent crime. Don Achille’s death makes room for the Solaras to take control of the neighborhood—and it demonstrates to Lila and Lenù that not even powerful, fearsome men are invincible.

Don Achille Carracci Quotes in My Brilliant Friend

The My Brilliant Friend quotes below are all either spoken by Don Achille Carracci or refer to Don Achille Carracci. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Stefano, according to Lila, wanted to clear away everything.

He wanted to try to get out of the before. He didn't want to pretend it was nothing, as our parents did, but rather to set in motion a phrase like: I know, my father was what he was, but now I'm here, we are us, and so, enough. In other words, he wanted to make the whole neighborhood understand that he was not Don Achille and that the Pelusos were not the former carpenter who had killed him.

Related Characters: Elena “Lenù” Greco (speaker), Don Achille Carracci, Alfredo Peluso, Stefano Carracci, Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo

Related Symbols: Fireworks

Page Number and Citation: 171

Explanation and Analysis:

Money gave even more force to the impression that what I lacked she had, and vice versa, in a continuous game of exchanges and reversals that, now happily, now painfully, made us indispensable to each other.

She has Stefano, I said to myself after the episode of the glasses. She snaps her fingers and immediately has my glasses repaired. What do I have?

I answered that I had school, a privilege she had lost forever. That is my wealth, I tried to convince myself.

Related Characters: Elena “Lenù” Greco (speaker), Stefano Carracci, Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo, Don Achille Carracci

Related Symbols: Language, Literature, and Writing

Page Number and Citation: 259

Explanation and Analysis:

I didn't understand. The Solaras’ behavior seemed […] consistent with the world that we had known since we were children. What, instead, did [Lila] and Stefano have in mind, where did they think they were living? […] They weren't reacting to the insults, even to that truly intolerable insult that the Solaras were making. […] Was this her latest invention? Did she want to leave the neighborhood by staying in the neighborhood? Did she want to drag us out of ourselves, tear off the old skin and put on a new one, suitable for what she was inventing?

Related Characters: Elena “Lenù” Greco (speaker), Marcello Solara, Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo, Don Achille Carracci, Stefano Carracci, Michele Solara

Page Number and Citation: 273

Explanation and Analysis:

Don Achille Carracci Character Timeline in My Brilliant Friend

The timeline below shows where the character Don Achille Carracci appears in My Brilliant Friend. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Masculine vs. Feminine Violence Theme Icon

...Lila began on the day they walked together up the stairs toward the apartment of Don Achille , a fearsome “ogre” of a man and the neighborhood loan shark in the girls’... (full context)

Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice Theme Icon

On the afternoon, Lila decides that they need to go to Don Achille ’s; Lenù is terrified. She has been taught that Don Achille must be avoided at... (full context)

It is Lila’s fault that she and Lenù are on their way to Don Achille ’s. Lila has recently thrown Lenù’s doll Tina down into a cellar grate. Lenù, a... (full context)

...from wounds, but it’s also, according to her father, what connects her own mother to Don Achille through a “very distant relationship.” Lenù is frightened by her father’s hatred of Don Achille... (full context)

Don Achille ’s “sworn enemy” is Signor Peluso, a carpenter with a gambling problem. Carmela and Pasquale,... (full context)

...that the girls can compete against Nino Sarratore and Alfonso Carracci (the third son of Don Achille ) in a little competition. Nino and Lenù struggle to keep up with the difficult... (full context)

...the sense of deference and respect Lila felt compelled to show Alfonso, the son of Don Achille —a sense that both girls have inherited from their parents. (full context)

...older brother Stefano, who is 14 and an apprentice at the grocery store owned by Don Achille , shows up at school to berate and threaten Lila. When Lila shouts back at... (full context)

...have no luck. As the girls walk back out of the cellar, Lila announces that Don Achille has taken the dolls and hidden them away in his black bag. Terrified, Lenù runs... (full context)

Lenù believes everything that Lila tells her—and so Lila’s declaration about Don Achille hits Lenù hard. She becomes frightened to her core and even gets sick with a... (full context)

...Tina, her exhaustion over keeping up with Lila, and her fear over the threat of Don Achille and the cellar. Soon, Nino begins to avoid Lenù too. Lenù doesn’t tell anyone about... (full context)

Lila is forbidden to do is to approach the home of Don Achille —but she nonetheless leads Lenù up the stairs toward the man’s apartment a few days... (full context)

At Don Achille ’s door, Lenù feels her heart pounding in her chest. Lila fearlessly rings the doorbell.... (full context)

Lila demands the dolls back, but Don Achille is confused. Lila tells Don Achille that he took them from the cellar. Don Achille... (full context)

Donna Maria calls for her husband—dinner is ready. Don Achille reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a wallet. He gives Lila some money... (full context)

With the money from Don Achille , Lila buys a copy of Little Women instead of a new doll. Lila has... (full context)

...of freedom alone with her beloved Lila. Unlike their other adventures to the cellar or Don Achille ’s, this adventure fills Lenù with happiness rather than fear. (full context)

In the middle of the summer, Don Achille is murdered on a rainy August day. Don Achille had just gotten up from a... (full context)

...and children, professing his innocence—he declares that he was not responsible for the murder of Don Achille . As the Pelusos begin to weep, Lenù joins them—only Lila does not cry. (full context)

...if her father was the murderer after all, he’d done the right thing in killing Don Achille . (full context)

...feels that without Lila, she will never be “the best.” Alfonso, the young son of Don Achille , also attends Lenù’s middle school. Lenù ignores him whenever she sees him, but she... (full context)

...dramatic and often tells stories of how a mysterious creature, rather than her father, killed Don Achille . Carmela confides in Lenù that she is in love with Alfonso, Don Achille’s son.... (full context)

...two gossip about school, Carmela and Alfonso, and the things Carmela has told Lenù about Don Achille ’s murder, Lila is pained to realize that Carmela believes everything she says—as “all the... (full context)

...car—a Fiat 1100. Alfredo Peluso’s old shop is now a grocery run by the Carraccis. Don Achille ’s death has removed the “shadow” of fear from the whole Carracci family, and their... (full context)

...is a construction worker and a Communist whose father was responsible for the murder of Don Achille . However, this only makes Lenù more excited about Pasquale. (full context)

...the Solaras and their establishment, a place for “loan sharks from the Camorra.” He accuses Don Achille of being a “Nazi Fascist” and claims Stefano runs the grocery using money from the... (full context)

...well. Lila retorts that the Pelusos are coming over too, knowing that the son of Don Achille will not invite the family of his father’s suspected murderer. Stefano surprises them, however, by... (full context)

...Pelusos against the Solaras. Soon, everyone is convinced that going to the “hated home of Don Achille ” to ring in the New Year as a united front is the only thing... (full context)

...that the journey the two of them began when they first climbed the stairs to Don Achille ’s apartment has ended with the man’s sons taking care of each of them. (full context)

...newfound love of shopping and glamour, but when Pasquale accuses Lila of taking advantage of Don Achille ’s black-market fortune and profiting off the “blood of all the poor” of the neighborhood,... (full context)

...competition in which Lila “humiliated” him even though he was the son of the feared Don Achille —he remembers finding Lila’s lack of deference “intolerable” and states that if it were up... (full context)

...jewels, she realizes that everyone in the neighborhood has borrowed from him. He has replaced Don Achille , and he runs the neighborhood now. (full context)

My Brilliant Friend

Don Achille Carracci Character Analysis

Don Achille Carracci Quotes in My Brilliant Friend

Adolescence: Chapter 21 Quotes

Adolescence: Chapter 43 Quotes

Adolescence: Chapter 46 Quotes

Don Achille Carracci Character Timeline in My Brilliant Friend