King Hedley II

Tonya is King’s wife. Like King, she is in her thirties. She is characterized primarily through her relationship with King and her daughter Natasha, but she is still a complex figure. Each of the characters in this play is characterized in part by their relationships with one another, and this is a direct reflection of the importance of family and community for this group of people. There is love between Tonya and King, but Tonya has serious reservations about King’s ability to escape both the cycle of neighborhood violence that he is caught up in and the various illicit economies in which he finds work. King does want to make the transition to legal employment, but Tonya doubts his ability to do so. She has so little faith in King that she wants to abort his child. Whereas King sees the baby as a beacon of hope, Tonya has already had the experience of raising a child in a neighborhood so devoid of resources and opportunity, and she is hesitant to try again. Speaking to King about her daughter, now a teenager, Tonya argues: “Look at Natasha. I couldn’t give her what she needed. Why I want to go back and do it all again?” (38). Tonya’s character, too, speaks to the impact of systemic racism on Pittsburgh’s Hill District. She understands how difficult it is to raise a child whom she cannot truly provide for, and does not want to see another young person grow up with “no future.”

Ruby is King’s mother. She is in her sixties and was a big band singer in her youth. She recently moved back to Pittsburgh after many years out of state, and King has not forgiven her for leaving him with her aunt Louise as a young boy. Ruby is a complex figure defined in part by this fraught relationship with motherhood. King is not shy about his resentment and often tells her to leave him alone. She frequently snaps back, “You watch yourself. I’m still your mama” (12), but it is obvious that she is aware of the impact that her choices had on her son. She is also characterized through her relationship with Elmore. She does love him, but it is a fraught, fractured love. She does not trust Elmore because of the many times he’s abandoned her in the past, but also because he killed Leroy, King’s real father. In her ability to forgive Elmore for killing the father of her child, Ruby displays an interesting complexity. She understands the cycle of violence in her neighborhood as a force larger than the men who are caught up in it, and seems to realize that Elmore was acting out in ways that he himself did not truly grasp. In spite of the way that she understands the difficulties of the neighborhood, Ruby still wants better for her son, and repeatedly urges him to stop his criminal activity and find legal work.

Elmore is Ruby’s longtime, on-again-off-again boyfriend. He is a professional hustler. Although often nattily dressed, his clothes are beginning to show signs of wear. His quasi down-and-out appearance speaks to his many years of life in the streets and helps to build a portrait of him as a man whose best days are behind him. He claims to be ready to settle down with Ruby, but she has never seen evidence that Elmore keeps his promises, and so she doubts him. About him, she remarks, “He play at manners, but it ain’t real” (18). And yet, Elmore does propose to Ruby and does eventually seem ready to commit to her. He is a complex character who shows signs of real growth during the course of the play. In addition to his willingness to finally make a life with Ruby, he also demonstrates self-reflection and remorse for his past crimes. He comes to realize that he is only one small piece in a cycle of violence that is much larger than he is. He sees that he has become caught up in this cycle, and that although he is in some ways a victim of it, he is also a perpetrator. Both Elmore and King, although mired in tragedy, also carry seeds of hope: They demonstrate that redemption is possible and depict a masculinity that is capable of transformation and change.

Mister and King have been best friends since grade school, and they sometimes engage in joint business ventures. Mister is polite, well-mannered, and always dressed sharply. Like King, he struggles in his romantic relationships and in finding legal work, and together the two men embody the problems of their generation. Mister, like King, recalls being the target of racism early on, while still in school. He and King remember how the stigma of being labeled a bad student followed them through their adolescence and into adulthood. He and King are driven to crime because of the lack of opportunities in their neighborhood, but their goal is to open a video store, a legitimate business, together. Mister thus embodies the same spirit of hope that King does. In the play’s final scene, Mister repeatedly goads King into engaging in retributive violence against Elmore, and he thus also embodies the difficulty of escaping the cycle of violence. His moral “code,” like King’s, leans heavily on defending one’s honor through violence. Although King has figured out that this kind of mentality is in part responsible for the difficulties that the two men experience, Mister has not quite come to that realization. Still, in the way that many of Mister’s experiences parallel Kings, he speaks to the same set of societal problems that plague King and the rest of the men in their generation.