This article proposes to analyze the ways in which Alain Mabanckou’s characters are mediators of an interpretation. Far from reader myths and stereotypes, the study surveys Mabanckou’s practice of the novel, seen as a simple representation, but as a means of analyzing social relations. At the intersection between rhetoric and sociology, it examines the text as a site of sociological analysis, placing emphasis more on the texts than on their contexts. The article will focus on the social analysis of groups and on deviance, as well as the consequences of relations between social groups. The article will highlight how the novels participate in analyzing this dualist representation of social groups, while literary criticism concentrating on a large part of Mabanckou’s work is generally interested in the weight of negative images of Black people in his novels.