Billy Prior
Billy is the main character in the book, but also an intriguing one, as his character is not generally particularly likeable yet as readers we find ourselves rooting for him because of his logical and pragmatic way of looking at things. Billy is a sexual sadist and this seems to be the identity he finds easiest to place on himself. He is sexually avaricious and thoughts of having sex occupy his mind at least three quarters of the time. He is bisexual and drawn equally to both genders. He is in a relationship with a young lady called Sarah, whom he genuinely loves, and begins a relationship with an officer called Charles Manning, whom he also seems to have feelings for.
Billy is a working class lad who has been promoted to "officer" or upper class by virtue of his leadership skills and strong performance in the war. He resents the principle of this but enjoys the status this temporary promotion bestows, such as entry into the officers club, and the officer uniform and grey coat that he takes enormous pride in. He is a "temporary gentleman" and aware of it, but also somewhat resentful of the working classes he has left behind, particularly his own father. He might not wholly support the politicians and the politics behind the war but has no doubt that it is his duty to serve in it and has incredible loyalty to the men he commands, both those who are still living, and those who were killed in action. It is seeing them die that makes Billy unsympathetic to the cause of the conscientious objectors, although he is also very fair, and does not want to see Beattie Roper die in prison for a crime she did not commit just because she happens to be a convenient "conchie" to pin the crime on. He is both intelligent and "street smart" which enables him to take every opportunity he can, and this also enables him to create the opportunity for interviewing Beattie using his status as an officer at the Ministry of Munitions. Billy also feels a tremendous conflict inside him, between the place he came from and the place he is now, not truly belonging in either.
Billy has "shell shock" which is an early term for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and his torment seems to center mostly on an obsession with eyes, someting that is definitely not helped by continually seeing the eye in the door when visiting Beattie in prison. During his last action in France he found himself holding the eye of one of the men in his command, and his nightmares always contain this experience to some degree. Billy is a willing patient with his psychologist, Dr Rivers, but is a combative one also, not content to share his experiences but viewing each appointment as a sort of trade-off, expecting Dr Rivers to be forthcoming about his experiences in return. Although not eager to talk about his nightmares and visions, Billy is willing to be honest about them and genuinely wants Dr Rivers to help him. As the novel progresses so do Billy's symptoms, and he finds that he is having periods of total memory loss, acting out of character and then not remembering a thing about it afterwards. As his main goal is to be able to go back to France and fight again this is something that he finds deeply troubling.
Beattie Roper
Beattie is a character loosely based on a real-life historical figure who plotted to assassinate the Prime Minister during World War One. She is a no-nonsense, working class woman from the north of England, the powerhouse in her family and one of the figures in her village whom everyone will turn to for advice or for a solution to a problem. She was the proprietor of the local shop before the war and consequently knows everyone in the village, including Billy, to whom she was something of a mother figure in his childhood, and this fact explains why she feels betrayed by his support of the war and the people she sees as her enemies. Beattie proclaims her innocence but this is never fully confirmed one way or another by the author. As a leading figure in the conscientious objector movement, Beattie is known to hide deserters, and so this fact makes her a natural target for authorities wanting to bring her down and framing her for the assassination plot in order to do so. On the other hand, she is a smart and savvy woman and it would be difficult to imagine her being completely duped by Lionel Spragge, and not realising that he was setting her up to incriminate herself. The driving force behind Beattie's actions is her son, William, a "conchie" who is currently imprisoned until he agrees to fight in France. She is beside herself worrying about the conditions he is being kept in.
Captain Charles Manning
Captain Manning received an honorable discharge from the army due to an injury to his leg, but would do anything to be able to go back to France and lead his men again. He is a respected and well-known military man with many connections who can get him out of trouble. He was able to use these connections after being arrested for homosexual sex in a public place. Captain Manning is like many men of his day who was gay but married and had a family, partly because homosexuality was illegal, and partly because he wanted the companionship of a spouse and children. He genuinely loves his wife, Jane, and his two sons, feeling closer to one than the other but never showing it. Manning is attracted to Prior and becomes rather attached to him, desperately trying to convince him to take a job at the Ministry with him rather than going back to fight. Manning is paranoid about being "outed" along with many other prominent, assumed homosexuals and is finding the fear of this happening more disturbing than the fear of being killed on the battlefield or in a bombing raid on London, where he lives. He feels watched and persecuted and has received anonymous letters insinuating that his associations with other known gay men will bring about his public downfall. Like Prior, Manning is a patient of Dr Rivers, suffering nightmares like Prior does, but being less forthcoming than Prior about what they may mean.
Dr Rivers
Dr Rivers is a real-life character who was a doctor of psychology during World War One, and who treated renowned war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. He is a man with an interesting history, incuding working as a missionary in his youth after just having qualified to practice as a doctor. He is conflicted by his wartime job, as he is aware that he is patching his patients together mentally with the sole purpose of having them considered sane enough to return to the front lines in France where it is more than likely that they will be killed. It's uncertain whether he feels guilty about this but he is troubled by the irony of the situation. Dr Rivers is almost as neurotic as some of his patients and this is exploited a little by Prior who "smells blood" and cannot resist trying to analyse Rivers in the same way he is being analysed. This leaves Rivers with the uncomfortable position of Prior's appointments feeling more like contests or battles. He has a terrible stammer that originated in his youth, although he cannot remember the event that it was precipitated by. He likes to believe that it was something simple, or innoccuous, like a coat hanging on the back of a door that to a small child would appear frightening in the darkness of the night, but realizes that the reality is probably something far more sinister and he is not keen to face that. One of the possible scenarios is that he was molested by the author Lewis Carroll who was a family friend and who took an over-excessive interest in Rivers as a child. Rivers is a complex man who tries simplify himself in his own mind and who is the key figure in determining the mental state of Manning, Prior and their fellow soldiers.
Lionel Spragge
Spragge is a handsome but odious man whose main role is to spy on the key figures in the conscientious objector movement, but his role seems to extend beyond simple surveillence, and he is the man responsible for setting Beattie Roper up to appear to be the instigator behind the assassination attempt on the Prime Minister. There seems to be few lows to which he will not sink, and he enjoys his job far too much for it to be something he does merely in this time of war in an effort to protect king and country. He is deceptive and portrayed himself as a deserter to Beattie, and took advantage of her kindness, and her hatred of the war, in order to make it appear that she was guilty. Spragge also keeps close tabs on Prior, and follows him as he goes about his daily business, although he is not particularly good at the subtefuge side of this and is spotted more than once. He is a combative man who seems to take a dislike to everyone.
Hettie Roper
Hettie is Beattie Roper's daughter and is far more suspicious of Billy than her mother is. She has learned to question the motives of even her oldest or closest friends. In their teens, Hettie and Billy dated briefly but never did anything more physical than hold hands and walk into the village, talking. Hettie is involved with Prior's childhood best friend, Mac, and is fiercely loyal to him. She is a genuine conscientious objector and is driven by her fervent belief that she is in the right. Her main concern during the novel is the welfare of her mother and the likelihood of her being released from prison.
Patrick MacDowell (Mac)
Mac was Prior's best friend during their childhood, and they were inseparable. Mac generally got into far more trouble than Billy as he tended to have more knee-jerk reactions to things, and he was not as clever as Billy. Billy recalls that Mac was too common even to be a Boy Scout. He came from the roughest part of town and consequently became a "bruiser" as a result. Mac is a conscientious objector but not from a religious perspective, but from a political one. He fundamentally disagrees with the war, and with the fact that the government are allowed to send citizens to fight in it. He is in hiding but because of their shared chlldhood decides he can trust Billy and agrees to meet him. The problem with this assumption is that he is correct in trusting the Billy he knows, but it is the Billy that exists during Prior's "lost hours", when he has blacked out and is guided by his subconscious, that gets Mac into trouble. He is eventually arrested, because Prior tells the authorities where he is.
