Philip Carey
Orphaned, clubfooted, idealistic, submissive young man whose life is ruined by his obsessive desire for a woman who is every conceivable manner as a poor a match as fate could determine. Stunted psychologically in his youth, Philip wanders aimlessly through life as he drifts from medical school to art in search an absolute morality in the universe that continually disappoints or underperforms.
Mildred Rogers
Philip is introduced to a woman working in a tea shop named Mildred by a friend from medical school. Though he initially finds her unattractive and uninteresting, he gradually becomes obsessed with her through a deep-seated exercise of masochism: the worse he gets treated by her, the more he desires her. Mildred is poor and uneducated, but intuitively manipulative. She is the perfect sadistic partner to his self-destructive tendencies which makes her Philip’s worst nightmare come true.
Cronshaw
Cronshaw enters Philip’s orbit during his period as an art student studying in Paris. Cronshaw is also a victim of self-destructive tendencies; he is an alcoholic whose nihilistic philosophy is a contagion. It is from Cronshaw that he develops a philosophy based upon Persian rug. The poet urges the young man to ponder what he terms “the figure in the carpet”: a metaphor for studying life to determine one’s own place within the pattern of life.
Harry Griffiths
Another medical student and friend of Philip’s who tends to him when he becomes seriously ill. Their relationship unravels after Philip introduces Harry to Mildred and they briefly become involved despite Harry quickly breaking off when he grows weary of her own obsession with him.
G. Etheridge Hayward
Hayward is another poet under whose philosophical spell Philip falls. He is the counterpoint to Cronshaw: idealistic instead of pessimistic and capable of disappointment in Philip for falling victim to 20th century vulgarity. The deaths of both his poetic and philosophical mentors sends Philip spiraling downward into the abyss.
Fanny Price
An older art student who hopelessly longs for Philip to show romantic interest and becomes something of a tutor and art mentor. She is also jealous, somewhat abrasive, and poor. After running out of even money to buy food, she commits suicide.
Thorpe Athelny
Thorpe Athelny leads a relatively benign and average working class existence with a wife to whom he is not actually married but who is the mother of his nine kids. (His real wife--with whom he once shared a much more financially comfortable existence--will not grant the divorce he seeks). Although somewhat drab and though such a lively home is not always peaceful, he may be the only truly happy and satisfied man that Philip ever meets. So enchanted by the promise of domestic tranquility does Philip eventually become, in fact, that when he falls in love with Thorpe’s daughter Sally after meeting her as a teenager, he eventually decides to propose and try to live by Thorpe’s example.
