Jack Gladney is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is a professor of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in middle America.
Babette is Jack's wife. They have seven children from previous marriages, and they are currently living with four of these children. Babette has an affair with Willie Mink, whom she calls Mr. Gray, in order to obtain Dylar.
Heinrich Gerhardt is the fourteen-year-old son of Jack and Janet Savory. He is precociously intellectual, prone to be contrary, and plays correspondence chess with an imprisoned mass murderer.
Denise is the eleven-year-old daughter of Babette and Bob Pardee. She suspects her mother is a drug addict and steals the bottle of Dylar to hide it.
Steffie is the nine-year-old daughter of Jack and Dana Breedlove.
Wilder is Babette's two-year-old son, and the youngest child in the family. Wilder is never quoted for dialogue in the novel (however, at one point, it is said that he asked for a glass of milk) and periodically Jack worries about the boy's slow linguistic development.
Bee is the twelve-year-old daughter of Jack and Tweedy Browner. She lived in South Korea for two years.
Dana Breedlove is Jack's first and fourth wife and the mother of Mary Alice and Steffie. She works part time for the CIA and conducts covert drop-offs in Latin America. She also writes book reviews.
Janet Savory is Jack's second wife and the mother of Heinrich. She manages the financial businesses of an ashram in Montana, where she is known as Mother Devi. Before that she worked as a foreign-currency analyst for a secret group of advanced theorists.
Tweedy Browner is Jack's third wife and the mother of Bee.
Mary Alice is the nineteen-year-old daughter of Dana Breedlove and Jack's first marriage.
Eugene is Babette's eight-year-old son who lives with his unnamed father in Western Australia. His father is also Wilder's father.
Murray Jay Siskind is a colleague of Jack's. He wants to create a field of study centered on Elvis Presley in the same way that Jack has created one around Hitler. He teaches a course on the cinema of car crashes, watches TV obsessively, and cheerfully theorizes about many subjects, including media saturation, mindfulness, and the meaning of supermarkets.
Orest Mercator is Heinrich's friend who trains to sit in a cage with vipers.
Vernon Dickey is Babette's father who visits the family in chapter 33 and gives Jack a gun.
Willie Mink is a compromised researcher who invents Dylar.
Winnie Richards is a scientist at the college where Jack works, to whom Jack goes for information about Dylar.
