Characters
- Richard "Ricky" Roma
- The most successful salesman in the office. Although Roma seems to think of himself as a latter day cowboy and regards his ability to make a sale as a sign of his virility, he admits only to himself that it is all luck. He is ruthless, dishonest and immoral, but succeeds because he has a talent for figuring out a client's weaknesses and crafting a pitch that will exploit those weaknesses.
- He is a smooth talker and often speaks in grand, poetic soliloquies.
- Shelly "The Machine" Levene
- An older, once-successful salesman, who has fallen on hard times and has not closed a big deal in a long time. In Mamet's original 1983 stage version, Levene mentions his daughter as a final ploy to gain Williamson's sympathy in order to get better leads. However, in the 1992 film version, Levene's discussion of his daughter also includes comments about her poor health in order to gain additional sympathy from Williamson.
- James Lingk
- A timid, middle-aged man who becomes Roma's latest client. Lingk is easily manipulated and finds Roma highly charismatic.
- John Williamson
- The office manager and main antagonist. The salesmen despise Williamson and look down on him, but need him desperately because he's the one who hands out the sales leads.
- George Aaronow
- An aging salesman with low self-esteem who lacks confidence and hope. A follower who lacks the ability to stand on his own.
- Dave Moss
- A big-mouthed salesman with big dreams and schemes. Moss resents Williamson, Mitch and Murray for putting such pressure on him and plans to strike back at them by stealing all their best sales leads and selling them to a competitor. Moss sees Aaronow as a potential accomplice.
- Baylen
- A police detective. He appears in the final act to investigate the office break-in and interrogate each cast member behind closed doors.
- Mitch and Murray
- These unseen characters are the owners of the real estate agency. They have set up a cruel sales "contest" that has put enormous pressure on the salesmen to produce or to lose their jobs.
Read more about this topic: Glengarry Glen Ross
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)