Character Analysis
Cruel and Colorless
Before we even meet Capricorn, he casts a shadow over the story. Meggie demands to know who he is, since she's heard her father and Dustfinger discussing him in scared, hushed voices. Finally, Dustfinger obliges her with this description:
If you were to see a cat eating a young bird I expect you'd cry, wouldn't you? Or try to help the bird. Capricorn would feed the bird to the cat on purpose, just to watch it being torn apart, and the little creature's screeching and struggling would be as sweet as honey to him […]. I don't suppose you think you can just help yourself to anything you want, never mind what or where. Capricorn does. (3.26-28)
Yikes. With a description like this, there's little room for doubt in our minds: Capircorn is one evil dude. But you don't have to take our word—or even Dustfinger's word—for it. Fenoglio, a.k.a. the guy who created Capricorn, says:
Your heart is a stone, Capricorn, a black stone with about as much human sympathy as a lump of coal, and you are very, very proud of that. (34.44)
There's just no way that someone whose creator compares their heart to a lump of coal is up to any good. Just no way. Unlike traditional villains, though, Capricorn isn't particularly scary to look at. In fact, if anything, he's kind of bland-looking:
Capricorn was a tall man, and gaunt, as if the skin had been stretched too tight over his bones. His skin was pale as parchment, his hair cut short and bristly. Meggie couldn't have said if it was gray or very fair […]. His eyes were almost as pale as the rest of him, as if the color had drained out of them, but as bright as silver coins. (14.4-5)
Even though this is a perfectly descriptive passage, it's still kind of hard to picture Capricorn, isn't it? He's all pale and fair and colorless, papery and thin (fitting, since he came out of a book and all). Don't worry, though—this all changes as soon as he opens his mouth:
His voice was more impressive than his face. It was dark and heavy, and the moment she heard him speak Meggie hated it. (14.9)
Yup—appearances are only skin deep, and when it comes to Capricorn, there's a whole lot lurking right below the surface. When he talks about killing Elinor as though it's the tiniest thing in the world to him, "The look in his eyes made Meggie shudder, as if someone were running cold fingers down her spine" (18.79). This definitely seems to be a case of the eyes being a window to the soul.
Showy (and Scary)
Vanity, thy name is Capricorn. Here's how Fenoglio, his creator, characterizes him:
Capricorn the unapproachable, unfathomable, insatiable, who likes to play God or the devil as the fancy takes him. (34.37)
And indeed, he spreads rumors that his mother was of noble birth—when she was actually a serving maid, and his father an abusive blacksmith (34.44)—playing God with the story of his life, and adopting a more glamorous tale for himself.
Capricorn doesn't just like flashy stories, though, and he also has a thing for the color red. The church in the village he's taken over, which he uses as a sort of base of operations, is entirely red: "The walls, the columns, even the ceiling, were vermilion, the color of raw meat or dried blood" (17.18). Um, that doesn't sound very appetizing… though it does sound pretty hard not to notice.
Capricorn is a tough nut to crack. Literally. While his men are all totally entranced by Mo's amazing reading skillz, Capricorn appears unmoved:
Capricorn alone seemed to feel nothing of the magic. But his eyes showed that even he was spellbound. They were fixed on Mo's face, as unmoving as the eyes of a snake. (18.37)
Capricorn is excellent at manipulating people, so it makes sense that he doesn't want to let himself be manipulated, even by something as wonderful as Mo's voice. And if he can't help but be entranced, it's not surprising that he tries to hide it—after all, Capricorn loves to be in power.
Selfish to the Core
Capricorn is not a fan of the world he came from. He calls Inkheart an: "extremely tedious, stupid, and extraordinarily long-winded book" (17.47), saying he won't let himself be spellbound by its story again. And this is what he has to say about his world:
All those troublesome creatures, those fluttering fairies with their twittering voices, the swarming, scrabbling, stupid beasts everywhere, the smell of fur and dung… Talking trees, whispering pools—was there anything in that world that didn't have the power of speech! And then those endless muddy roads to the nearest town, if it could be called a town—that pack of well-born, finely dressed princes in their castles, those stinking peasants, so poor there was nothing to be gotten out of them, and the vagabonds and beggars with vermin dropping from their hair—oh, how sick I was of them all. (17.47)
Wow, way to get your hate on, dude. We notice, though, that in this snappy little monologue, Capricorn shows us that he's naturally inclined to use people. He's annoyed at the peasants for being "so poor there was nothing to be gotten out of them," as though they're like ATMs or vending machines. That sounds like a pretty crummy way to view fellow human beings.
He's greedy, too. The first thing he makes Mo read out of a book is gold. He says he always needs more money:
[…] it's never enough for all the wonderful things that can be bought in this infinitely wide world of yours. A world of so many pages, Silvertongue, so very many pages, and I want to write my name on every one of them. (17.82)
Never enough, eh Capricorn? We bet those peasants you were just hating on might disagree. But Capricorn's greed isn't just about money either—he also keeps a firm grip on knowledge when it comes to the guys he makes work for him. As Fenoglio says to Basta:
Capricorn thinks you're stupid and despises you for it. He despises you all, his devoted black-clad sons, although it's his own doing that you're still so ignorant. And he wouldn't hesitate to set the police on to any one of you if it was to his advantage. (30.89)
Here Fenoglio is referring to the fact that Capricorn doesn't let his men learn to read; or if they do learn, it's only a few letters at a time. Basta knows how to write his name, and that's about it—which shows us that Capricorn doesn't just want all the things in the world for himself, but to control knowledge and people too.
In the end, Capricorn is killed by the Shadow, his men scattered, his enterprise fallen. And yet all the damaged he's caused—lost lives and property, lost years in the case of Meggie's mom's disappearance—remains. Way to leave a legacy, dude.