Colonel Sartoris Snopes is a young boy who is small and wiry for his age, dressed in patched, faded jeans. He possesses a strong internal sense of justice that wars with his deep-seated desire to remain loyal to his family. Living as part of a poor tenant farming family in the post-Civil War South, he bears the heavy emotional weight of his father's destructive actions and feels torn between right and wrong.

Abner Snopes is a poor tenant farmer and former Civil War veteran who operates with a cold, calculated ferocity. He views the social and economic hierarchies of the post-war South with bitter resentment, acting out his grievances through intentional property destruction. He demands absolute obedience from his family, using fear and physical force to maintain control.

Lennie is the capable and hardworking wife of Abner Snopes and mother to Sartoris. She carries a broken mother-of-pearl clock as a dowry, an artifact of her more stable past before the war. She attempts to maintain a sense of order and care within the family, though she lacks the physical or emotional power to stop her husband's destructive habits.

Major de Spain is a wealthy landowner who hires the Snopes family as tenant farmers. He lives in a grand former plantation house that symbolizes the surviving opulent aristocracy of the South. He expects respect and financial restitution when his property is damaged, putting him in direct opposition to his new employee's deep-seated anger.

Mr. Harris is a local farmer who enters into a property dispute with Abner Snopes over a stray hog. After his barn burns down, he takes the matter to the local justice of the peace to seek restitution. During the trial, he ultimately decides against forcing a young boy to testify against his own father.