Cap (Captain) Character Analysis

A Nigerian man living in London. The son of a wealthy family, Cap originally came to the city for law school, but he soon dropped out and spent the majority of his father’s money on cigarettes and women, so that eventually his family stopped sending him an allowance. Always wearing the same outfit (a “greenstripe suit and a pair of suede shoes”), Cap is a true schmoozer and a mooch, a man constantly asking his friends if he can borrow money. Moses knows this all too well, since Cap used to stay in his room at the hostel until the landlord finally kicked him out. Deeply averse to holding down a steady job, Cap leverages his romantic relationships for money and lodgings, often becoming involved with wealthy white women in order to sustain himself financially. At one point, he even becomes romantically involved with two women at once, and when he can’t repay the money one of them lends him, he steals the other’s watch and pawns it in order to settle his debt. When he’s not manipulating women, he has to get creative; much like Galahad, Cap resorts to eating pigeons, devising an elaborate technique of catching them from where they dwell just outside his window. Above all, this strange industriousness illustrates Cap’s commitment to avoiding steady work, as he’d clearly rather cheat his friends and resort to unconventional hunting methods than accept a job as a laborer like Moses or Galahad.