Character guide

Unknown Narrator

major

Also known as myself, yourself, mine, my

He is the first-person consciousness of the book, a writer who once buried a story with a Collaborator and is now morbidly driven to resurrect it in definitive form before posterity can dismember it. His distinctive tension is that he reads on and on while watching his listener suffer an agony he cannot name, mistaking admiration for consent and persistence for loyalty. He matters because the entire narrative is filtered through his voice—his guilt, his telepathy, his refusal to call their collisions quarrels—making the act of reading aloud itself the crime the title keeps circling.

Edward Burden

major

Also known as young Edward Burden, Edward, Burden, young Burden, The good Edward, Poor Burden, obscure Burdens, the Edward Burdens, Edward Burdens

Edward Burden is the confident worshipper of law, property, and the august constitution, arriving at the narrator's office with his hat held before his mouth like a man in church. His flaw is a complacent faith in obvious platitudes—honesty pays, genius takes pains—which the narrator both despises and quietly prepares to shatter. He matters because his wedding-day motorcar and Italian honeymoon are the fragile surface on which the story's moral arithmetic begins to crack, and because his fiancée's frightened eyes force the narrator to feel, for the first time, that he has wronged someone.

Miss Averies

supporting

Also known as little Miss Averies, Averies

Miss Averies is Edward Burden's fiancée, brought to the narrator's office to secure the money for a motorcar and a wedding journey to Italy. Unlike her confident betrothed, she appears as a rather frightened fawn before an anthropomorphic deity, and the narrator finds himself silently confessing that he has wronged her. She matters because she embodies the story's argument about women, gamblers, and the coin of fragile beauty paid for a right to wealth—and because the narrator believes she, of all people, might have it in her power to atone.

Robert

minor

A named individual, possibly a friend or acquaintance, with limited but notable presence.

Annie

minor

A named woman, possibly a servant or acquaintance, appearing briefly.

Johnson

minor

A named individual, possibly a colleague or servant, with a minor role.

Zola

minor

Referenced as a literary figure, possibly discussed by characters, but not a scene presence.

Tristan

minor

Mentioned as a legendary figure, likely in a literary or metaphorical context.

Death

minor

Personified concept, referenced metaphorically rather than as an active character.