54 pages • 1 hour read
Sutton E. GriggsImperium in Imperio
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1899A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Belton Piedmont
Content Warning: This text contains racist language, including racial expletives, and violence, as well as depictions of oppression, enslavement, and death by suicide. This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.
Belton Piedmont is the protagonist of the text. At the beginning of the novel, he is eight years old and lives in a one-room home. He is beginning school for the first time, something that his mother requires him to do, believing that education is the key to his future success. The novel then follows him through high school, where he is abused by the teacher regularly, yet also driven to be more successful through his competition with Bernard. He is educated in a wide range of topics, particularly the English language and history, and leaves high school as a great speaker with respect from his peers. This continues in college, where he convinces his classmates to fight for equality for their only Black teacher and is unmatched in his intelligence. Upon graduation, he struggles with using his education, first losing his job as an educator for writing against political corruption, then losing his job in the post office for refusing to support the postmaster’s candidate due to his racist nature. After discovering that his wife gave birth to what he believes is a white man’s child, he dedicates his life to fighting racial injustice and improving the lives of Black people. Ultimately, he ends up in the Imperium in Imperio, with heavy influence in its action and decision-making.
Belton is a tragic hero. He often faces difficulties at the hands of both a racist system and fate, as well as his own unwillingness to understand the situations that he is in. For example, when he is finally able to secure two different jobs—first as an educator and then as a stamp clerk—he loses both from his desire to speak out against political corruption and his unapologetic effort to improve the lives of Black people. As a result, he struggles with employment and the opportunity to use his intelligence and education. Additionally, as he travels down to Louisiana, he does not understand the unwritten rules of the state and is first thrown from a moving train and then removed from a diner and arrested for refusing to pay. Once in Louisiana, he attends a white church, and in trying to help a white woman with her hymn, he is lynched and shot, then forced to kill a doctor to escape. Further, after abandoning his wife for years, he realizes that the child’s skin grew darker and that it was, in fact, his. Each of these instances are a combination of his situation, a racist system, and fate, and each situation pushes him into poverty and despair while endangering his life. However, he remains loyal and steadfast to his cause, returning from each with a renewed vigor to fight the unjust system around him and bring about equality. He ends the text by following the advice he was given by Mr. King, the man who paid for his college education, to whom he promised “to never class all white men together, whatever may be the provocation, and to never regard any class as totally depraved” (17). He stands his ground in front of the Imperium and refuses to create a new nation out of violence and death, convinced to his end that there was hope for harmony between white and Black people.
Bernard Belgrave
Bernard Belgrave, a foil to Belton, is the antagonist of the text, though this is not initially clear. He is nine at the start of the text but, unlike Belton, has vast amounts of wealth from his father—a congressman. Because of his mother’s light skin, Bernard is treated kindly in school and has the financial means to attend Harvard. He is a great orator and extremely intelligent, graduating as valedictorian and, with the help of his father’s friend, Mr. Leonard, overcomes the corrupt political system to become a congressman. He uses his father’s money and his own influence to help Black people. When his fiancée dies by suicide and reveals that white intermarriage with Black people is destroying the Black population, Bernard dedicates his life to ensuring that Black people achieve equality through whatever means necessary.
Bernard is the embodiment of the belief of some Black people that true equality can never be achieved through assimilation. He espouses the belief that the system is far too broken—and most white people too racist—for there to be space for Black people to achieve equality and overcome rampant social injustice. Eventually, he is elected the first president of the Imperium in Imperio and uses his influence to convince the members of the Imperium to violently separate from the US to form their own nation by taking over the state of Texas.
Bernard is, in many ways, a demagogue, using his political power to advance his own personal agenda and that of his deceased fiancée with little regard for what is better for his people. He also utilizes corruption to gain further control and influence in the political world. Upon becoming a politician, he decides to “make a diligent study of the art of pleasing the populace and to sacrifice everything to the goddess of fame [and] to become an obedient servant of the people that he might thus make all the people his servants” (34). Instead of entering politics for the betterment of the people, he is instead only interesting in serving them so that they will, in turn, respect and serve him. At the conclusion of the text, he once again uses lies, not revealing to the people that Belton already disagreed with his plan, and then forces them to sign an agreement of support to ensure it passes through the rest of the Imperium.
Berl Trout
Berl Trout is the Secretary of State of the Imperium in Imperio and the narrator of the text. His two letters, which open and close the novel, serve as a framing device for the text. Little is known about his character, other than the author’s fictional letter, which states he is unquestionably truthful. Throughout the novel’s events, Trout is destined to be killed as a traitor for distributing this narrative to the public and revealing the existence of the Imperium. He accepts his status as a traitor for what he is doing to his fellow Black people, but he believes that history will show that what he did was for the betterment of humanity.
Antoinette Nermal
Antoinette Nermal is a teacher in Richmond. Belton meets her on his tour of the school and is awed by her beauty. The other teachers are surprised when Antoinette calls Belton “grand,” as she never had an interest in any other men. The two begin a relationship and eventually marry, and she becomes pregnant. However, when her child is born, Belton believes that she has been impregnated by a white man, as the child’s skin is too light to be his own. Belton abandons her and flees to Louisiana. Antoinette is left to raise the child on her own and is abandoned by her church and social circles for her supposed adultery. However, as the child grows, his skin grows darker, and his features become very similar to Belton, revealing that he was, in fact, Belton’s child. When Belton returns at the novel’s end to see her one last time, she forgives him for abandoning her and confesses that she still loves him.
The birth of Antoinette’s child—which Belton believes is the child of a white man—is the driving action for Belton’s quest for equality throughout the second part of the novel. Although he still loves Antoinette, he pushes her aside and “buries” her in his heart, instead choosing to dedicate his life to helping Black people. Their separation allows him to find the Imperium and devote his time and energy to ensuring its success.
Viola Martin
Viola Martin is the love interest of Bernard. He first meets her at a social gathering, where she has many suitors due to her unmatched beauty. Bernard pursues Viola but is confused by her hot-and-cold behavior toward him. After he wins a seat in Congress, he decides to confess his love to her, only for her to turn him down and die by suicide. It is revealed in a note she left for Bernard that she had been studying the history of Black people; she learned that white people and Black people producing children was leading to impotence in Black people. She vowed never to contribute to this and elected to die by suicide instead of marrying Bernard due to his mother’s status as a mixed-raced woman.
Like Antoinette, Viola is the motivation for Bernard’s actions throughout the latter part of the novel. In her note to him after her death, she asks Bernard to do whatever he can to “separate” white people and Black people and not allow them to “intermingle.” After reading her words, he vows to do so. In the climax of the text, he follows through with this vow, proposing and pushing through a plan for the Imperium to use violence to overthrow the state of Texas and produce an entirely new nation for Black people.
