Character Clues
Character Analysis
Speech and Dialogue
Lefty Lewis knows how to relate to kids, and we can tell by the way he talks to them. Just take a look at how he treats Bud, a kid he just picked up off the street: "Lefty Lewis rubbed his hand over my head and said, 'Look at this noggin, I rest my case. Boy looks like one George Washington Carver's experiments sprouted legs and run off. You sure you're not from Tuskegee, Alabama, Bud?'" (11.101) We can see that Lefty is just teasing Bud in a good-natured sort of way and doesn't mean any harm. We can tell because he turns the teasing into a full joke (as if Bud looked like the Planter's peanut man) and rubs Bud's head.
Herman Calloway, on the other hand, talks about Bud differently. When Bud tries to tell Miss Thomas his story, Calloway says, "Sounds like a case of diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain" (14.28). Well, what can we say? Bud called him the mean old coot for a reason. The words Calloway uses are nasty and kind of gross. It isn't like Calloway is entirely wrong. Bud was indeed having a hard time telling his story in a clear way, but Calloway shows how he has no patience or empathy for kids.
Physical Appearances
In Bud, Not Buddy, we can learn a lot about people from the way Bud describes their physical appearances. Let's take a look at an example or two.
Bud realizes that he has found a family when he takes a look around at the Sweet Pea. He thinks, "And I hadn't noticed before how nice Steady Eddie was either. He talked out of the side of his mouth and kept his eyes kind of blinked halfway down […] And he was the first person I'd ever seen who could eat and talk and laugh and drink and sneeze whilst keeping a toothpick dangling out of his mouth, no matter what he'd do that toothpick always stayed dancing just below his mustache" (14.91). Besides the fact that Bud calls him nice, we begin to like Eddie, too. He seems pretty talented (not to mention kind of easy-going, fun-loving, and quirky) to keep that toothpick in his mouth.
Miss Thomas is a good lookin' singer with an attitude to match her bling.
I didn't see it before, but now that I looked I could tell that Miss Thomas must be the most beautiful woman in the world. When she talked she moved her hands and fingers around and the lights from the ceiling and from the little candle on the table would bounce off all them diamonds and spark up in your eye and make you feel like you'd been hit with some kind of magic fairy dust, then you couldn't help but smile. (14.84)
We can tell by Bud's description of how sparkly she is that being with Miss Thomas makes you just feel good because she is lovely and special.
Props
Bud always carries around that suitcase. Well, what does it make us think about him as a character?
I knew a nervous-looking, stung-up kid with blood dripping from a fish-head bite and carrying a old raggedy suitcase didn't look like he belonged around here. (5.2)
The suitcase makes him look like he is a homeless traveler, a kid without someone to protect him, and that's why Bud is nervous. No one wants to look all alone and like they've got no one to help them out. Bad people can cause trouble if they see that.
The man guarding the food line at the mission carries a different kind of prop, one that is not so nice. Once Bud pushes the man's buttons, "He reached in his pocket and pulled something out that looked like a heavy black strap and slapped it across his hand. Uh-oh, here we go again" (6.12). This prop tells us that this man has no patience for people and uses violence to solve problems rather than talking. We can see how this man has no sympathy for kids.
These props wouldn't be so important if they weren't such a big part of the way these characters are described. Bud has a suitcase because he really is traveling all over the place looking for home. The guy at the food line carries a black strap because he's really not a very nice kind of guy. Sometimes the things people carry around really can tell us a lot about who they are.