The title, Desperate Characters, comes from a sentence in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
In the novel, Charlie and Sophie discuss Charlie's "desperation," and Otto tells Sophie that he and Charlie had recently argued over the Thoreau quote. Charlie had written the quote down, in order to stare at it, and called it "a prime example of middle-class self-love." This began a fierce argument between the two men. In the final scene, the motif of desperation returns: Charlie, demanding to speak to Otto on the telephone, yells out that he's desperate, and Otto shouts, "He's desperate!" before throwing the ink bottle at the wall.
