James Agee
Agee wrote the text for this book in collaboration with a photographer on assignment for Fortune Magazine. Agee would go to become one of the country’s most respected film critics and win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family. Refers to himself in the book as a “counter-spy.”
Walker Evans
Also referred to by Agee as a “counter-spy.” Walker Evans is the photographer who accompanies Agee on the assignment.
Fred Ricketts
Middle-aged tenant farmer. Husband to Sadie and father of seven. His neighbors snidely refer to the family as a “bad lot.”
Sadie Ricketts
Slightly younger than her husband. Notably unhappy as a result of a mixture of shame and anger toward having photographs of her very poor economic situation being taken for international publication.
Thomas "Bud" Woods
Neighbor to the Ricketts family, also a tenant farmer and just a few years older than Fred Ricketts. Whereas Fred is referred to as a two-mile farmer, Bud is a one-mule farmer. The Woods family is a blend of children from Bud’s former previous marriage, his current marriage and a daughter of his second wife Ivy from a previous common law relationship with another man.
Ivy Woods
Bud’s second wife who is less than half his age. In fact, Bud has a son from first marriage who is older than Ivy and Bud’s eldest daughter is only a few years younger.
Emma
Emma is the teenage daughter of Bud who is already married to an older man. The unhappy nature of this marriage and the necessity for Emma to leave the family to go off and live with a man with whom she has nothing in common. Emma is presented as the centerpiece of how the Woods family responds to the intrusion into their lives much more positively than the Ricketts. One of the most iconic scenes in the book is the moment of sad departure when Emma is forced to drive off with her unkind husband.
George Gudger
Head of the third farming family in the book. A one-mule, half-cropper barely in his 30’s with four children.
Annie Mae Gudger
George’s slightly younger wife who is also the daughter of Bud Woods.
