Speaker
The speaker of the poem is an unnammed soldier who often speaks on behalf, not only of himself, but of his fellow soldiers. He is angry about war, not out of cynicism or nihilism, but out of a belief in the importance of preserving life. For this reason, he finds arguments about the importance and necessity of war as a means of saving lives to be immoral. At the same time, despite his fiery rhetoric, he is to an extent resigned. He accepts the presence of Death, even while expressing anger over the circumstances that have brought him into contact with it. He also accepts it as inevitable that another war—indeed, a bigger one—will one day occur, with the same rhetoric justifying it. Thus the speaker veers between jaded resignation and furious rebellion.
Death
Death is personified in this poem, and is in many ways its most vividly portrayed character. He eats, grooms, and even spits among the soldiers, his presence serving as both a tribute to and a mockery of the idea of military solidarity and camaraderie. However, despite being an accepted presence, he still creates all kinds of disruptions. He brings chaos to mealtimes; when he spits, he spits deadly bullets; when he shaves, he cuts fellow soldiers with his scythe. In other words, Death causes tragedy simply by his nature, not because he's malicious. The problem isn't the existence of Death, but the existence of war itself.
The Soldiers
They are never named, but the speaker's fellow soldiers share many of his characteristics (and he rarely distinguishes himself from these other soldiers, preferring to use the pronoun "we"). These soldiers are inured to death's presence, but it is still a disruption—especially, of course, when they are one of Death's victims. However, the speaker does distinguish between his fellow soldiers, made wise and jaded through experience, and hypothetical future soldiers. These future soldiers may still fall for rosy narratives about the moral necessity of war, not realizing that war invites and embraces Death for the sake of nationalism.
