 Walker argues that this serves to highlight the harsh, nightmarish world of reality in which he has been forced to live.The novel includes a host of minor characters who, in Richard Franklin's words, "grope for the means to assert the validity of self and to anchor this individuality in a nightmare which constantly faces it with black nothingness".These characters range from Colonel José Parrales Sonriente, otherwise known as the "man with the little mule", whose murder at the Cathedral Porch opens the novel, to a series of beggars, prisoners, minor officials, relatives, flatterers, barkeepers and prostitutes.