Pierre Anton
Pierre Anton is not your typical young adult novel hero. He's really not your typical character at all. He is almost a metaphor for a philosophical principle rather than a regular seventh grade child, even a precocious one. He is bold, challenging and profound, but also rather depressing in that he is a seventh grader who believes life to be meaningless.
It would be wrong of us to assume that Pierre Anton is an introspective nerd, kind of like the last kid to be chosen in sports, or the one who eats his lunch alone every day in the cafeteria. When we read between the lines of the narrator's descriptions of him we discover him to be a child given to violence; he has a broken nose because he head-butted a boy two years ahead of him in school. So much for the nerdy introvert. He is also provocative and the kind of child who lights touch paper and retreats when it comes to his fellow students; he drops a philosophical bomb on them on the first day of school, then disappears up a tree as the chaos he has caused ensues without him.
Pierre Anton represents an ideal, and in his case this is the ideal of the authentic person. He knows who he is and is comfortable with that. He also believes that in the scheme of things he is profoundly unimportant, and meaningless. He believes strongly that the selling of the Heap to the art museum has proved his point that nothing has meaning because if all of those things had meaning to the kids they would never have sold them in the pile; meaning is more than financial value.
As he walks inexorably towards his own murder, we get the feeling that he has a sense of fatalism about this and knew all along that his devotion to his philosophy would lead to his death. Since he feels that he has no meaning, then his death should not be frightening to him.
Pierre Anton also serves to highlight the cruelty of his classmates, and what can happen when mob rule takes over an otherwise civilized society. He does not seem to realize that it is only the meaning that he does not believe in that creates a civilized society in the first place.
Agnes
Agnes is the narrator of the book and the instigator of the violence that the group descends into. We don't learn much about her considering that she is the narrator, except that she is best friends with Ursula-Marie and that she wishes her mother would let her dye her hair blue. She also wishes that she could wear all black, but her wardrobe goals are sabotaged by her mom (again) who insists that she wears color. Agnes is ready to be a gothic, gloomy teen but her parents are not ready to let her be one. Agnes is already unable to think for herself at home and she shows the same tendency at school to be led along by everyone else because she is only just finding out what her "self" actually is.
Agnes seems to hugely enjoy mob rule particularly since she is the representative of most of the class and she definitely has the capacity to be a school bully (although not the leader of the bullies, more of a tag-along). .The entire Heap degenerates because Agnes does not want to play the game; she doesn't want to give up her new sandals.
Agnes stays home the night of Sofie's rape, because she has been told to. She believes strongly that she hasn't participated in the rape and says that the day afterwards, at school, when nobody mentions what has happened to Sofie, the silence is almost worse than when they were actively making trouble. She is incapable of seeing that her silence is consent to the group and that by remaining quiet about the rape she is condoning it and aiding and abetting what has been done to Sofie.
Agnes basically operates from a place of fear; fear of being seen to be different from the group, fear of not fitting in, fear that Pierre Anton is actually right, because she wants things to have meaning. She wants him to be wrong and is frightened that he might not be. She is easily led and would be the type of person who would commit horrible acts and atrocities just to go along with the norm.
Sofie
Sofie is the only clear victim in the novel and one of the few truly authentic characters in it. She agrees to give up her virginity because it means a lot to her, but he doesn't love the boy and is only having sex because her classmates tell her to. Sofie is not the kid who dares to be different. We don't actually know what Sofie looks like, whether she is cute or plain, whether she is the hot girl in the class that all the boys covet. Hans rapes her not because he has a secret crush on her, or because she's the girl every boy wants to be with, but because he is mad at her over forcing him to sacrifice his beloved bicycle to the heap.
Sofie is a girl seeking revenge. She cuts off Jon-Johan's finger because it is the finger he penetrated her with. At least this shows that there is one character left in the book who still feels that things have meaning. She has unraveled quickly and seems to have some kind of post traumatic stress disorder.
Sofie loses her mind at the end of the book, unlike the boys who raped her who seem pretty okay with the fact that they raped her. She knows that she has given up something she can never get back and is unable to deal with this without help.
Dennis
Dennis is the first person to give up something to the Heap. His meaningful possession is his Dungeons and Dragons book.
Gerda
Gerda is the young girl who aggravates Agnes by suggesting she should sacrifice her new shoes to the pile. Agnes wants to be a fashion designer and does not take kindly to this idea. She sacrifices her hamster to the Heap which makes the reader dislike her intensely.
Huge Hans
Huge Hans is a deeply unlikeable character; he is a huge boy as his nickname suggests and purely because he is angry with Sofie for choosing him to give up his neon bike he demands her virginity in return. Any boy who can equate the loss of a bicycle with the loss of a girl's virginity clearly has no moral compass whatsoever.
Jon-Johan
Jon-Johan is one of the boys who stands guard whilst Huge Hans rapes Sofie. Which makes him just as culpable in the rape. He is also believed to have participated by penetrating her with the finger that she later cuts off. He is also the boy who rats on the class and alerts the media to the savagery that is happening at the sawmill.
Lady William
Lady William is actually a boy who is rather effeminate. His nickname is a further demonstration of the cruelty of his classmates.
Ursula-Marie
Ursula-Marie is Agnes' best friend and her fashion crush as well. She is allowed to pick her own clothes and consequently dresses in all black, except for her blue hair which she wears in braids. Her braids are her sacrifice to the Heap.
