Moketubbe

The son of Issetibbeha, Moketubbe becomes "the Man," the new chief, when his father dies (313). The narrative describes his "broad, flat, Mongolian face" (320), but it is most preoccupied with his physical and mental debility. It repeatedly refers his obesity and to his "monstrous shape," describing him as "diseased with flesh" (327, 321). During the pursuit for his father's runaway slave, he has to be carried by other Indians. Behind his "unfathomable lethargy" may be some form of retardation; even as a child, he only takes interest in the pair of "shoes with red heels" that his father brought back from Paris before he was born (320, 316). When Herman Basket and Louis Berry talk about him, they seem to suggest that his obsession with acquiring those shoes along with the fact that his father was "not old" when he "became dead" imply that Moketubbe is a parricide (313, 317). The scene in which Issetibbeha, looking at his son, remembers how his father gained power, and realizes that "a man cannot live forever" (322), points in the same direction. The narrative does not, however, offer any definitive evidence that Moketubbe played a role in his father's death.