Mrs. Curren
Mrs. Curren is both the protagonist and narrator of the novel. She is a retired classics professor who considers herself a liberal opponent of apartheid; however, she has lived in Cape Town her entire life, and as a middle-class white person, has benefited from apartheid policies for seventy years. Curren learns at the beginning of the novel that her breast cancer has spread to her bones. On the same day, she finds a homeless man named Vercueil camped in her yard. Over the course of the novel, after seeing the atrocities committed by police and white supremacist groups in Guguletu—and especially after seeing Bheki's body and witnessing the police murder Bheki's friend John in her house—Curren realizes that she has been complicit in the oppression of non-white people in South Africa. She also begins to passively address her daughter's complicity in the letter she's writing her. The "letter" Curren is writing to her daughter throughout the novel is the novel itself.
Vercueil
Vercueil is a nomad and former seaman who Curren finds camped in her yard when she returns from the doctor's office at the beginning of the novel. Though she initially shoos him away, he returns. They get off to a rough start, but eventually, Curren accepts Vercueil living on her property. The more that time passes, the more permissive Curren becomes with Vercueil, and by the end of the novel, he's living with her in her bedroom, cooking for her, and tending to her in her final days.
What little the reader learns about Vercueil is that he spent time at sea where he lost the use of his right hand, he used to work for the SPCA, and he drinks a lot of brandy and sweet wine. Coetzee never reveals his race, but Curren describes Vercueil as having inhuman qualities—yellow eyes and fanged teeth. She also suspects at various points throughout the novel that Vercueil is some sort of angel who possesses supernatural qualities.
Florence
Florence is Mrs Curren's housekeeper who lives in a settlement outside of Cape Town. She has three children, Bheki, Hope, and Beauty. She is a Black woman who is highly suspicious of any white South Africans, including her employer, Mrs. Curren. Florence's experiences at the hands of white South Africans under apartheid only confirm her suspicions time and time again. Curren describes Florence as severe and unsmiling, but wonders if she smiles with her children when they are alone. Florence is only seen in Age of Iron through the eyes of Mrs. Curren, and Curren is self-conscious of her inability to fully portray Florence's life.
Bheki
Bheki is Florence's fifteen-year-old son. He is involved in the anti-apartheid resistance, and his mother, Florence, is quite proud of him for this. Curren considers Bheki and his rising generation as puritanical and severe. By the end of the novel, Curren begins to realize that their comradeship is urgent and necessary to their survival. Bheki grew up between Guguletu and Cape Town. He is killed by either police or white supremacists or a combination of the two; it is unclear who killed him, but as Thabane points out, either way, the bullets that killed him will say "Made in South Africa. SABS approved" (113).
John
John, also known as Johannes, (both, Curren is sure, are noms de guerre) is Bheki's friend from the settlement. Together, they hope to help the anti-apartheid cause. Curren immediately dislikes John upon seeing him hanging around her house with Bheki without her permission. John starts to sleep in her car, and Curren confronts Florence and Bheki about it, but she ultimately loses that fight. One afternoon, John and Bheki are run down on John's red bike by a police van. They slam into a utility truck and John badly injures his forehead and ends up in the hospital. While he's in the hospital, Bheki is killed. John shows up at Curren's house after leaving the hospital, but he's still in bad shape. Curren tells him about Bheki and lets him stay at her house and patch himself up. A few days after he arrives, the police show up looking for him. They surround the house and eventually shoot and kill John and subsequently ransack Curren's house.
William
William is Florence's husband, who is solely portrayed through a memory of Curren's. He works slaughtering chickens, and Curren remembers bringing Florence to him one day and seeing him at work, killing the chickens with such ease, and the memory never left her.
Mrs. Curren's Daughter
Mrs. Curren's daughter, who remains unnamed, is the person to whom the entire novel is addressed. She left South Africa in 1976 and immigrated to America to start a family of her own far from the evil policies of apartheid. Throughout the novel, Curren works out her own place within apartheid and realizes that it is not enough to think it is evil and divest oneself from it, ideologically. In a way, the novel becomes a passive critique of Curren's daughter's choice to leave South Africa, or, more specifically, her choice to put it all behind her (51).
