Character Analysis
Lambro
Lambro has become rich by smuggling piracy and slave trading. He has become hardened by the kind of life he had chosen to live. The only soft spot in his heart is his love for his motherless daughter and his love for his enslaved homeland. He is a man of inflexible will and rigid self control. Externally he is calm and has the manners of a gentleman. There is a contradiction between what he is in appearance and what he is within greedy, cruel, merciless, and passionate:
Not that he was not sometimes rash or so,
But never in his real and serious mood;
Then calm, concentrated, and still, and slow,
He lay coiled like the Boa in the wood;
With him it never was a word and blow,
His angry word once o'er, he shed no blood,
But in his silence there was much to rue,
And his one blow left little work for two.(Canto III, St. 48)