The Red Room · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in The Red Room by August Strindberg.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Arvid Falk
major
Also known as Mr. Falk, Falk, young Falk, Mr. Arvid Falk, Mr. Arvid, Arvid
Falk moves through drawing rooms, newsrooms, and the smoky back tables of the Red Room, taking the measure of a city that rewards flattery and punishes conviction. His charm and his pride pull against each other: he can trade platitudes with a hostess one moment and erupt into reckless satire the next, and the sight of a morose friend can sink him into gloom. He is the reader's eyes on the whole apparatus — family, church, press, parliament — and his slow education in how little any of it means is the book's engine.
Charles Nicholas Falk
supporting
Also known as Mrs. Charles Nicholas Falk, Mrs. Falk, Nicholas Falk, Charles Nicholas, Nicholas, Charlie
Where Arvid scorns the world, Charles Nicholas has mastered it: he keeps the accounts, the household, and the family reputation in good order. The brothers' affection is real but strained by everything unspoken between them — money, duty, and the suspicion that each has chosen the wrong life. His steady presence measures how far Arvid has wandered from the ordinary, and how much of that distance is loss rather than liberation.
Olle Montanus
supporting
Also known as Olle, Montanus, pawn Olle
Olle was the bohemians' great hope — a politician and speaker before he was a sculptor — until failure soured him into solitude, and he now refuses to impose on the men who once cheered him. He is the group's conscience and its warning: the same idealism that animates Falk, hardened into something silent and bitter. When his shadow falls across the Red Room, even Falk's fireworks go out, and the novel's question about what idealism costs becomes personal.
Sellén
supporting
Also known as Mr. Sellén
Sellén moves through the artists' colony with the easy cynicism of a man who has learned to distrust his own enthusiasm, mocking sentiment even as he notices the first snow's solemnity. His wit is a shield: he clings to flippancy in the infirmary, in the graveyard dark, wherever feeling threatens to become real. He matters because he shows how the bohemian circle survives — by irony — and how much that survival costs.
Rehnhjelm
supporting
Also known as that young Rehnhjelm, Lady Rehnhjelm, Mr. Rehnhjelm, young Rehnhjelm, A Soul Overboard Rehnhjelm
Rehnhjelm enters the theatre hungry for art and is handed a servant's part while a waiter is given Don Diego — a humiliation the company discusses before he has even learned his lines. His earnestness makes him both sympathetic and vulnerable in a world of jealous leading ladies and autocratic managers. His fortunes run alongside Falk's as a second study in what happens to a young man who bets everything on a vocation.
Falander
supporting
Also known as Mr. Falander, the melancholy Falander
Falander sits over his dinner and dissects the theatre manager's success with the precision of a man who has stopped expecting better from anyone, including himself. His gloom is not passive — it is a settled philosophy, and he offers it to Rehnhjelm like a consolation and a warning at once. He gives the bohemian circle its darkest voice, the one that asks whether any ambition is worth the disappointment it guarantees.
Struve
supporting
Also known as Mr. Struve, Journalist Struve, envier Struve
Struve moves through the artists' circle as an acquaintance of Arvid, a man whose ambitions outpace his talents and whose pride flares at the smallest audience. When he shoulders a coffin into the street, the watching crowd feeds a devil of vanity in him, and he scolds the driver with contemptuous familiarity to heighten the effect. That hunger for notice, tangled with quiet resentment of those who surpass him, makes him a volatile presence in the Red Room's orbit.
Lundell
supporting
Also known as the practical Lundell, Mr. Lundell, Presently Lundell
Once a painter of religious pictures, Lundell abandoned the altar for the table, becoming a genial freeloader who only visits the Red Room when his purse is empty. He defends his endless dinners and suppers as essential research, insisting that invitations are how a portraitist studies his subjects. His easy pragmatism and appetite for comfort set him apart from the colony's hungrier, more tortured souls, offering a wry counterpoint to their ideals.
Fritz Levin
supporting
Also known as Levin, loafer Levin, Fritz
Levin drifts through the bohemian haunts as the friend nobody quite trusts, a man who borrows from Falk and never repays. His sudden promotion after nineteen years of service astonishes even those who pity him, and his presence at Falk's countinghouse supper is a small social triumph. He embodies the colony's shabby gentility, the gap between respectable ambition and the reality of borrowed clothes and unpaid debts.
Eugenia Falk
supporting
Also known as Eugenia, Falk
Eugenia Falk runs a household of small economies and large proprieties, hosting teas where women's rights and velvet dresses are discussed with equal gravity. She refuses to interfere in her husband's business even as she trades barbs with Mrs. Homan about her brother-in-law's disreputable company. When Lady Rehnhjelm unexpectedly praises Arvid, Eugenia's stiff defensiveness melts into eager agreement, revealing a woman caught between social caution and family loyalty.
Ygberg
minor
Also known as Mr. Ygberg
A fellow writer and acquaintance in literary circles.
Dr. Borg
supporting
Also known as Dr. Borg, Borg, Henrik Borg, the redoubtable Borg
Borg inhabits the infirmary at Kingsholm, where he dissects the mutilated body of a suicide and greets late-night visitors with an offer to see an old friend. He is the colony's sardonic anchor, the man whose composure never cracks even as he leads Falk and Sellén through creaking doors by candlelight. His willingness to traffic in corpses and secrets makes him both indispensable and unsettling, the conscience the bohemians pretend not to need.
Nyström
minor
Also known as Nyström
A member of the artists' colony.
Smith
minor
Also known as Mr. Smith
An Englishman involved in the newspaper syndicate.
Agnes Rundgren
supporting
Also known as Agnes
Agnes Rundgren moves through the artists' world with a disarming recklessness, turning a moral execution into a farce when she fires Falander's revolver up the chimney. She parries accusations about her whereabouts with flat denials, refusing to be shamed by a man she has clearly outmatched. Her spell over Rehnhjelm is total even as she wounds him, making her the story's most dangerous and magnetic presence, a woman who plays by no rules but her own.
Isaac Levi
minor
Also known as Isaac, brother Levi, Levi, young Levi, the rascal Isaac
A Jewish moneylender and businessman.
Mrs. Homan
minor
Also known as Mrs. Homan
A society lady and mother of Evelyn.
Andersson
minor
Also known as Anders Andersson
A servant or workman in the Falk household.
Gustav Eriksson
minor
Also known as Gustav, the lad Gustav
A young apprentice or workman.
Master Joiner Eriksson
minor
Also known as Eriksson
A master joiner and employer of Gustav.
Beda Petterson
minor
Also known as Beda
A young woman in the theatrical company.
Count Splint
minor
Also known as Count Splint
A nobleman involved in the Triton insurance scandal.
Nathanael Skore
minor
Also known as Skore, the Rev. Nathanael Skore
A clergyman who appears in the narrative.
Lieutenant Kling
minor
Also known as Lieutenant Kling
A military officer and acquaintance.
Gustav Sjöholm
minor
Also known as Gustav Sjöholm
A member of the theatrical company.
Mr. Lund
minor
Also known as Mr. Lund of the Sauce-Pan
A publisher or bookseller.
Aunt Beata
minor
Also known as Aunt Beata
An elderly relative of the Falk family.
Evelyn Homan
minor
Also known as Evelyn
A young society woman courted by Charles Nicholas.
Captain Gyllenborst
minor
Also known as the proud Captain Gyllenborst
A proud military captain.
Pierre Clément
minor
Also known as Pierre Clément
A Frenchman encountered by Arvid.
Colonel Sabelman
minor
Also known as Colonel Sabelman
A military officer mentioned in the narrative.
Hjalmar
minor
Also known as Hjalmar
A minor character in the bohemian circle.
Jan
minor
Also known as Jan
A servant or workman.
Vestergren
minor
Also known as Vestergren
A minor acquaintance.
Per Illson
minor
Also known as Per Illson
A peasant or minor character.
Sven Svensson
minor
Also known as The peasant Sven Svensson
A peasant encountered in the countryside.
Larsson
minor
Also known as Larsson
A minor character.
Albert
minor
Also known as Albert
A minor character in the narrative.
Jenny
minor
Also known as Jenny
A minor female character.
