Dev (Devereux)
Dev is a man adrift in the stagnation of a rural Irish town. He works at a garage and leads a life of emotional withdrawal after the death of his parents. His house—empty, cold, and unkempt—reflects his internal desolation. He becomes unwillingly entangled in a violent situation when he’s forced to “mind” a man taken hostage by local thugs. Dev represents the quiet despair of small-town isolation. His passivity throughout the story—his inability to act decisively even when threatened—mirrors a deeper moral paralysis. Yet, he is not cowardly; his inaction carries a kind of resigned decency. He endures, rather than participates in, the brutality surrounding him. Barrett uses Dev as an emblem of those trapped between apathy and conscience, spectators to violence rather than perpetrators.
Cillian
Cillian is volatile, crude, and dangerously impulsive. He embodies the lawlessness and aimlessness of youth in a decaying town with no moral or social anchors. He and his accomplice break into Dev’s home and coerce him into holding a hostage for them, setting the central conflict in motion. Cillian’s aggression seems born of insecurity and social frustration. His violence feels performative — a way to assert control in a world where he otherwise has none. Barrett portrays him not as purely evil but as a product of stagnation and poverty, where masculinity is measured in dominance and cruelty. His dialogue is crude but sharply observed, reflecting Barrett’s realism.
Denny
Denny serves as the foil to Cillian — controlled, pragmatic, and slightly older. He has a cold intelligence that makes him the more menacing of the two. While Cillian rages, Denny plots. He understands the implications of their crime but continues regardless, driven by a sense of fatalism. He represents the corrosion of morality by familiarity with violence. Denny’s calmness in the face of chaos shows how normalized brutality has become for him. In some ways, he is the story’s realist — he sees the situation for what it is, and he knows how it will likely end — but he lacks the moral awareness to step back from it.
James (the Hostage)
James is a largely passive presence — bound, gagged, and terrified — but he is central to the story’s tension. He becomes the symbolic weight of revenge and retribution. Through James, Barrett examines how violence in small communities is both personal and cyclical — grievances handed down and acted upon in closed circles. Despite his helplessness, James’s mere presence forces Dev to confront his own morality. The way Dev cares for him in small gestures — giving him water, checking his bonds — shows the contrast between cruelty and decency in extreme situations.
