William Rivers
Rivers is the protagonist of the novel. Rivers is a psychiatrist from Cambridge, though he serves at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, treating officers who are suffering from war neurosis. Although Rivers has…
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Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon is technically in the antagonist’s role, though he is still very much a hero of the story and Rivers’s friend. Sassoon is a decorated Second Lieutenant in the British army who is…
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Billy Prior
Prior is a Second Lieutenant in the British army and one of Rivers’s patients at Craiglockhart. Prior arrives at the hospital with mutism and memory loss, unable to speak as a result of a…
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David Burns
David Burns is an officer in the British army and Rivers’s most traumatized patient in Craiglockhart. After a shell explosion throw Burns through the air and he lands headfirst in a rotting corpse whose…
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Wilfred Owen
Owen is a soldier and patient at Craiglockhart. Owen admires Sassoon’s published poetry as well as his anti-war declaration, and initially approaches Sassoon to have him sign several of his books. However, though Sassoon…
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Robert Graves
Graves is a Captain in the British army, and Sassoon’s commanding officer and dear friend. Although Graves shares Sassoon’s anti-war ideology, he cares more about keeping his head down and protecting Sassoon, though Sassoon…
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Sarah Lumb
Sarah is Billy Prior’s girlfriend, whom he meets in a café in Edinburgh. Although Sarah is not native to the city, she moves there during the war to work in a munitions factory, which…
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Bryce
Bryce is the head psychiatrist at Craiglockhart and Rivers’s commanding officer, though the doctors never actually refer to themselves as officers. Bryce is a good friend and capable psychiatrist, and Rivers feels a strong…
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Henry Head
Henry Head is Rivers’s former co-worker and longtime personal friend. While they both worked as researchers in Cambridge, Head intentionally severed the radial nerve in his arm so that he and Rivers could study…
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Prior’s Father
Prior’s father visits Craiglockhart briefly to see Billy Prior and speak to Rivers. In his conversation with Rivers, Prior’s father embodies the worst aspects of masculinity and he utterly resents his son’s status as…
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Ralph Anderson
Anderson is a medical officer who worked at a field hospital on the front, but now is a patient in Craiglockhart. Although Anderson is a surgeon, the stress and trauma of the front cause him…
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Willard
Willard is an officer sent to Craiglockhart for psychologically-induced paralysis. However, Willard is convinced there is a physical injury to his spine, since admitting a psychological problem seems cowardly and un-masculine to him. When Rivers…
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Lewis Yealland
Yealland is a doctor at the National Hospital in London who serves briefly as a foil to Rivers’s “feminine” nurturing method of psychiatry. Yealland is overly-masculine and domineering, believing that his knowledge and power…
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Ada Lumb
Ada is Sarah’s mother, who comes to visit her once in Edinburgh. Ada is immensely cynical about relationships between men and women, believing that they can never be anything more than an exchange of…
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Minor Characters
Prior’s Mother
Prior’s mother visits Rivers immediately after Prior’s father, mostly to apologize for her husband’s behavior. In spite of her husband’s blue-collar lifestyle and animosity towards the upper classes, Prior’s mother wants a better, more successful life for Billy.
Brock
Brock is a medical officer at Craiglockhart and one of Rivers’s associates.
Madge
Madge is one of Sarah’s friends and co-workers at the factory.
Betty
Betty is one of Sarah’s friends and co-workers at the factory. When Betty discovers she is pregnant, she tries to give herself and abortion with a coat-hanger but misses and puncture her bladder instead.
Lizzie
Lizzie is one of Sarah’s friends and co-workers at the factory. Lizzie has a drunk and abusive husband whose gone off to war, and thus regards World War I as the only peace she’s had in years.
Ruth Head
Ruth is Henry’s wife.
Charles
Charles is Rivers’s brother, whom he briefly stays with while on leave. Charles owns a failing chicken farm.
Bertha
Bertha is Charles’s wife.
Callan
Callan is Yealland’s patient with mutism—forming a parallel to Prior—whom Yealland “cures” by imprisoning and torturing him.
Broadbent
Broadbent is one of the medical officers in Craiglockhart, a despicable little man who lies to Bryce to take unwarranted leave from his duty, until he is caught and court-martialed.
