Django Unchained - Characters & Cast

His primary motivation is his unwavering love for his wife, Broomhilda, and the desire to rescue her from slavery. This is coupled with a powerful drive for revenge against the cruel individuals who oppressed and separated them.

Django begins as a traumatized, subjugated slave. After being freed by Dr. Schultz, he transforms from a victim into a confident and lethal bounty hunter. His initial motivation is survival, but this quickly evolves into a singular focus on rescuing his wife, Broomhilda. He learns to read, shoot, and navigate the world as a free man under Schultz's mentorship. By the end, after Schultz's death, Django must rely entirely on his own cunning and skill to escape, return to Candyland, and complete his mission, fully embodying the 'unchained' hero of legend.

Initially motivated by profit, Schultz's motivation shifts to a moral and personal obligation to help Django rescue Broomhilda. He is deeply offended by the inhumanity of slavery and is driven by a strong, if sometimes theatrical, sense of justice.

Schultz is an eccentric German dentist-turned-bounty hunter who is articulate, intelligent, and morally opposed to slavery. Initially, he frees Django for purely pragmatic reasons—to help him identify a bounty. However, he develops a genuine friendship with and sense of responsibility for Django. His arc is one of deepening moral conviction. While he is comfortable with killing for money, he is ultimately so disgusted by Calvin Candie's barbarism and disrespect that he cannot bring himself to shake Candie's hand, an act that leads to his own death but represents his ultimate refusal to compromise with evil.

Candie is motivated by power, profit, and the sadistic pleasure he derives from the complete domination of others. He is entertained by bloodsport and obsessed with maintaining the racial hierarchy from which he benefits.

Calvin Candie does not have a developmental arc; he is a static representation of evil. He is the charismatic, yet monstrously cruel, owner of the Candyland plantation. A supposed Francophile who doesn't speak French, he presents a veneer of Southern gentility and culture that thinly masks his sadistic nature. His cruelty is revealed through his enthusiasm for Mandingo fighting and his casual brutality towards his slaves. His character serves to embody the absolute corruption and moral depravity of the slave-owning class.

Stephen is motivated by the preservation of his own privileged position within Candyland. He is fiercely loyal to Candie and the power structure that, while enslaving him, elevates him above other slaves. He seems to genuinely despise other Black people who challenge the status quo, like Django.

Stephen is Candie's loyal head house slave and the film's secondary antagonist. He has no arc of redemption. He is intelligent, observant, and has carved out a position of significant power for himself within the plantation's hierarchy. Far from seeking freedom, he is a staunch and cunning defender of the slave system and his master. It is Stephen who first suspects that Django and Schultz's story is a ruse. He represents the psychological damage of slavery, showing how the oppressed can become the most fervent enforcers of their own oppression.