Ring Shout

Together, Butcher Clyde and the Grand Cyclops constitute the antagonists in the novel. Butcher Clyde has pale, white skin and blood-red hair, physical features that associate him with white supremacy and violence. His body comprises multiple bodies that are sometimes revealed as many mouths on his skin. He frequently hums dissonant versions of traditional Black music, an indication of his warped understanding of Black people and their culture. His major motivation in the novella is to bring the Grand Cyclops to this universe.

His primary strength as a character is his ability to manipulate others in service to this cause. His ability to manipulate is mostly focused on Maryse. Although Butcher Clyde constantly commits evil, violent actions against others, his stance toward Maryse and other characters is not founded in the white supremacist ideology that motivates members of the Klan. He has a general disdain for all of humanity, which he sees as inferior to the Grand Cyclops. His downfall comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of Maryse, in particular, and humanity in general. He believes that only power matters. His refusal to see that there are other humane values such as love and creativity leads to his death at the end of the novella.

Butcher Clyde is the minion of the Grand Cyclops, a monster who first enters the narrative as flesh served to unsuspecting members of the Ku Klux Klan. When she finally coalesces into one body, it is a horrifying one with many mouths (like Butcher Clyde), a warbling voice that marks her as not from this world, and flesh made of the bodies of people who ate parts of her. Her origins make her an avatar of the suffering of her victims. This role leads to her demise when the Night Doctors, creatures who eat pain, chop her up and cart her off to their home.

The Shouters are a group of Black performers who use the Ring Shout to generate magic for the workings of Nana Jean and the protection of communities around them. They are led by Uncle Will, a formerly enslaved man whose stories about life during enslavement times serve as the source of several of the notations (epigraphs) in the novella. In addition to channeling magic, the Shouters serve as the collective voice of the community on Nana Jean’s farm. For example, they express the deep sorrow of the community on the death of Sadie Watkins through a Shout and singing of traditional Black music. Their actions drive home the point that reliance on Black cultural heritage can be a source of resilience and power.

The Ku Kluxes are monsters who look like ordinary people to the human eye, except for people like Maryse, who can see their true form. They can pass as humans only because they wear the robes and hoods of Ku Klux Klan members. Each Ku Klux was once a human but transformed into a monster form because their white supremacist and racist ideas make them vulnerable to the power of Butcher Clyde and the transformative power of the flesh of the Grand Cyclops. Clark’s transformation of Klanspeople into Ku Kluxes is one of the major speculative elements of the novel, one that helps him make the point that racism and white supremacy can turn humans into easily manipulated monsters.

Sadie is one of two characters who are close friends of Maryse. She is known for her humor and sharp shooting skills, which she practices with a gun she calls “Winnie.” Sadie is slim, has long, brown hair and light brown skin, and frequently wears overalls. Originally from Alabama, Sadie’s grandfather raised her on stories from Black folklore. He took Sadie in after her mother abandoned her. Like many other characters, Sadie carries around trauma, in her case the lynching to death of her grandfather by the Ku Klux Klan. Sadie’s defining act is her defense of Maryse during a fight with the Ku Kluxes. She receives wounds that are so grave that they kill her. Her death serves as one of the many motivations that drive Maryse to defeat Butcher Clyde.

A veteran of World War I, Cordelia is called “Chef” because of her experience cooking up bombs for the French during the war. She is a sharpshooter whose skills outpace Sadie’s. She is also a staunch friend who has little patience for Sadie’s irreverence and Maryse’s desire to sometimes go into danger on her own. Much of her development as a character takes place outside the frame of the novella. Coupled with her ability to see the Ku Kluxes, fighting in the war on terms of equality with French soldiers made adjustment to life hard in the United States of the 1910s and 1920, leading Chef to wander from Harlem to Chicago during the early 1920s.

Like other characters, Chef finally finds purpose and community when she heeds Nana Jean’s mystical call to come to the farm. Chef is most important in the novella as a friend who refuses to let Maryse go alone. For example, she is by Maryse’s side at the final great battle.

Nana Jean is the founder of the community of resistance fighters. She speaks in Gullah throughout the novella and is a powerful magician who uses her power to save wanderers like Maryse from themselves and protect members of the surrounding community through the creation of a potion called “Mama’s Water.” Beyond being the glue that holds the community together, Nana Jean is a seer whose ability to have visions during the Shouts makes her one of the first to be aware that the leaf-shaped sword poses a danger to Maryse. Physically, Nana Jean is a large-bodied woman with gold-brown eyes. She has a real presence because the air of magic around her is palpable, most so during the Shouts she uses to channel her power.

Nana Jean is a central character in the novella because of her association with Gullah cultural heritage. The power and wisdom that she derives from her Gullah identity reflect Clark’s emphasis on cultural heritage as a source of strength and resilience. Ring Shout is speculative fiction. Clark’s choice to make Gullah and the traditional Ring Shout sources of magical power in-world is just one of many interventions that he makes to show what would happen if magic were a real force in the universe.

Jadine, Margaret, and Ondine are three entities from another universe. Like Butcher Clyde, they intervene in the life of Maryse to shape the future of Earth. From Maryse’s perspective, the aunties are the image of churchgoing Black women who dress well on Sundays. Maryse calls them aunties because they remind her of important female figures outside the nuclear family who play a role in raising children. The aunties are much more than kindly figures, however. They are potent enough to pass the sword to Maryse, open portals between this universe and others, and ultimately oppose Butcher Clyde for a time. They have foxlike teeth and faces that are stitched from brown skin, so they are not human. One of the aunties, Jadine, even has the power to see multiple universes that are generated each time a person makes a choice.

An important moment in the novella occurs when the aunties are forced to reveal that their motivation for giving the sword to Maryse was that they saw her as a dangerous person who might go over to Butcher Clyde and the Grand Cyclops’s side if the aunties did not co-opt Maryse. Hiding this information from Maryse is a betrayal that changes Maryse’s view of herself (and of the aunties). The aunties’ choice not to reveal this information earlier makes Maryse more vulnerable to Butcher Clyde’s manipulation; their explanation of their rationale and their willingness to help Maryse figure out a way to defeat Butcher Clyde and the Grand Cyclops help smooth over this moment of conflict, so much so that Maryse trusts them enough to continue fighting as a new magical power arises in Rhode Island.

The Night Doctors are physically tall, white creatures who have no eyes or mouths and have bodies that are skin draped over bones. Their interest in humanity is to understand the nature of hate, which they see as a highly prized delicacy that they can eat and one of the results of great suffering. Their taste for hate makes them particularly interested in enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, and Black people who are living in communities where white supremacy and racism make their lives precarious.

In-world and in reality, Night Doctors are body snatchers in Black American lore. Historically, Night Doctors were seen as people who kidnapped Black people and stole their corpses to conduct medical experiments on them. In the novella, they are figures of dread whose taste for hate inadvertently proves beneficial to Maryse and the resistance. Motivated by their taste for hate, they show up to fight on the side of Maryse during the final battle of the novella. Their inclusion in the novella as otherworldly figures is one of the many ways that Clark reimagines the South of the 1920s.

Emma is a German widow and person of Jewish descent. She is a small, bespectacled woman who believes in socialism and collects and transcribes the Shouts for posterity. Emma connects the struggles of Black Americans and Jewish people across the world to a larger struggle between the forces of hate and community. Her inclusion in the novella is important because it shows the possibility of fruitful, respectful relationships across racial and ethnic lines; her role in the preservation of Shouts effectively makes her a keeper of the magical lore of this world and a preserver of history that may be lost unless written down.

Martin is the deceased brother of Maryse Boudreaux. In life and death, Martin is a protective older brother. Before the events of the novella, Martin saved Maryse’s life by hiding her in a secret compartment on the night Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes attacked the family home. He appears in the novella as a voice that encourages Maryse to heed the lessons of Black folklore and as a part of the ghostly force that helps the resistance during the battle at Stone Mountain. He gifts Maryse a book of folklore in which, unbeknownst to her, he writes folk stories to assist her in her struggle to defeat the Ku Kluxes. Martin is ultimately a conduit of the Black cultural heritage that supports the efforts of Maryse and her compatriots to defeat Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes.

Frenchy is the owner of Frenchy’s, a juke joint that is an informal social space for members of the Black community. A tall, handsome man, Frenchy is originally from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia. He is Maryse’s lover and a person whose tales of his travels give Maryse a peek into a world in which she is not consumed by fighting and the demands of the sword for vengeance. Frenchy becomes one of Maryse’s motivations for taking on Butcher Clyde after he takes Frenchy hostage and sends him away to Stone Mountain.

Molly is a scientist who uses dissection and other medical tools to study the Ku Kluxes. It is Molly who offers the theory that hatred is like an infection that turns ordinary white supremacists into Ku Kluxes. She is also one of the first to warn that the Ku Kluxes are shifting into a different form, a change that foreshadows the great battle to come.