Marta is the second-most featured character in the novel, and though she never narrates, the narrator often feels as though she can sense Marta’s thoughts. Despite this, the narrator struggles to understand Marta. Marta is withholding, and rarely shares details about her own life.

The narrator understands that Marta’s view of the world is unique, blending the real and unreal in her mind: “She only likes to talk about other people—some I might have seen once or twice by chance, others I may never have seen at all, and never could, because they lived too long ago. She also likes to talk about people who never actually existed” (5). When Marta shares her experiences, they are often presented in a way that resembles the structure of the novel. She offers pieces of stories to the narrator, some real, others not, never including herself in them. Marta exists in spite of time, not allowing it to define her or control how her mind works.

Marta’s relationship to time is unique among the characters of the novel, as she seems to ignore it. She thinks non-chronologically, allowing her mind to define the world in unique ways. She often revels in fiction and struggles to remember the past, organizing by feeling rather than in order: “Marta has sometimes seen images she doesn’t understand, and which are the only thing […] that frightens her” (226). Since Marta makes associations between events and her own feeling and experiences, they often blend together in her mind. This makes it difficult for her to not only understand when something happened, or in what order events occurred in, but also to distinguish between what is real and what is not. When she remembers something that she cannot place, she grows afraid, confused as to why her mind possesses such a thought or memory.

Kummernis is a saint that the narrator reads about, and who is at the heart of the novel and its magical realism and folklore. Kummernis defied her father’s wishes to marry in favor of serving God in a convent. When she prays for a miracle to deliver her from her femininity, she grows a beard. The sight of her is astounding, and while her father rages, others react differently: “The harlots knelt down one after the other, making the sign of the cross. Kummernis, or whoever it was, raised her hands, as if to enfold them all. In a quiet voice she said: ‘My lord has delivered me from myself and has bestowed His face on me’” (69). Women coveted by men, just as she is, are reverent of her. By answering Kummernis’s prayer with a beard, God places Kummernis in a unique position. It is a miracle that clearly signals the favor of God, as Kummernis possesses his face, but the contradiction of her female body and masculine features inverts the gender binary. This angers authority, both in the form of her father and the church.

Though Kummernis’s story is condemned as sacrilege, as the church is unwilling to accept a martyr who exists outside of the gender binary, her memory lives on. Kummernis symbolizes hope for those who do not fit in. This sense of hope is so strong that any efforts her father or the church make to keep her story hidden fail: “[T]he memory of the saint survived and inspired much hope in people’s hearts, spreading throughout the country and abroad, where she was given many names, for each land engenders new names” (73). The story of Saint Kummernis spreads, and as it does, it becomes a local story, adapting to new countries and demonstrating a persistence in the connection she makes with others. With so much of House of Day, House of Night considering the ways in which contradictions coexist, Kummernis captures this aspect well.

Kummernis acts as a guide to Paschalis, a monk who identifies as a woman. Paschalis becomes Kummernis’s most passionate follower, working throughout the novel to commemorate her and convince the church to canonize her. His passion for the saint stems from his own struggle with feeling incomplete, seeing in Kummernis’s appearance the person he wishes to be. Her existence outside of the gender binary is one he recognizes: “He was born imperfect in some way, because for as long as he could remember he felt there was something wrong with him, as if he had made a mistake at birth, choosing the wrong body, the wrong place and the wrong time” (80). Paschalis feels as though he was meant to be born a woman. As an adult, this feeling manifests in his desire to join a convent and live as a woman. He even fantasizes about his writing about Kummernis impressing the Pope so much, the Pope declares him a woman.

Paschalis is a dynamic character, as his journey to canonize Kummernis leads him to conclude that he must make the changes he desires. At first, he struggles to understand the feeling of imperfection inside him, as well as how to resolve this feeling. However, after being rejected by the Bishop of Gatz, Paschalis leaves the city, ready to forge a new future: “He realized that he must create himself over again, this time out of nothing, because what he had been until now was based on the one single misgiving that he had not been created properly” (243). Paschalis realizes that he focused too much on the perceived mistake of his body. He searched for solutions that relied primarily on faith and at times magic, believing the Pope’s blessing would actually transform him into a woman. As he leaves Gatz, though, he understands that he can reform himself. He is in control of his identity, and if he wants to live as a woman, he can.

Ergo Sum is one of the many minor characters in the novel whose histories intersect with the narrator’s life. Ergo Sum’s life is dominated by his past. When he was a political prisoner during World War II, he resorted to cannibalism alongside other prisoners as a last chance for survival. The trauma of this experience plagues him, freezing him in much the same way as that horrible winter did: “The first crystals of frost had appeared in his mind and were now spreading in all directions […] that terrible, empty landscape of eternal winter had already taken over in his mind—nothing but a white, frozen expanse all around” (200-01). This excerpt demonstrates how the trauma follows Ergo Sum throughout his life, leaving him feeling burdened by what happened. He tries to find an outlet for these feelings, his transformation into a wolf meant to be some kind of penance.

Despite the pain Ergo Sum feels, he proves to be a dynamic character, finding new life after beginning work with Bobol. His new life on the farm helps him to regulate his trauma, feeling as though he has a purpose. When he decides to donate blood, he begins to free himself from the burden of his guilt: “He liked the idea of letting those internal red rivers flow out of himself, sickeningly thick and warm, in the belief that someone would want them, with all their memories of blurred, white, Siberian landscapes, soured by terror and tainted by lack of strength” (236-37). By giving blood, Ergo Sum not only helps others who may need it, but also relinquishes his past, letting the cold horror of Siberia leave him. His blood will make an impact, while allowing him to move on and form a new identity.

Franz Frost is the former German resident of the narrator’s home. He built the house and began to raise a family there before being drafted into the war, where he died.

His troubles began before the war, however, as he struggled with his perception of reality. At first, he feels as though the world changes slightly, but when he hears of the discovery of a new planet, he fears the unknown: “If you aren’t aware of something, does that mean it doesn’t exist? If a person becomes aware of something, does that knowledge change him? Can a planet change the world?” (136). He begins to consider the nature of existence, wondering if what he cannot see or is unaware of can affect him. When he suffers from nightmares, he blames the planet, trying to find order in an increasingly chaotic world.

Like Franz Frost, Peter Dieter is a former German resident of Silesia. When he returns with his wife to the village he grew up in, he crosses the border into a foreign nation. Peter represents the legacy of the region’s shift from German to Polish land. He, like others, does not recognize his former home: “The worst moment that day was when Peter didn’t recognize his own village. It had shrunk to the size of a hamlet, with houses, backyards, lanes and bridges missing. Only a skeleton of the original village remained” (101). The place he once knew so well changes, shrinking. Peter is one of many characters impacted by the border and the way it changed his life, affecting how he understands himself.

Leo is a secondary character who is a clairvoyant. He acts as a mirror to the character of Franz Frost in the sense that he struggles to control reality. As Leo’s powers as a clairvoyant develop, he begins to see the end of the world. When he expects the world to end and it does not, he struggles to believe that the world is the same as it once was: “Leo began to live in a world that no longer existed, a pure illusion, a dream born of instinct, a habit of the senses. It wasn’t at all hard to do; it was easier than the old life. Nowadays going into town was like stepping into a mist” (169). The world that Leo once lived in goes on, but he, convinced of its end, only pretends to be in that world. He shapes his own reality based on his beliefs, much like Franz considers the instability of reality. Leo is in many ways delusional, but captures the ways in which each person understands the world differently.

There is a married couple that comes to the region after their respective evictions from eastern Poland, called only “he” and “she” in the narrative. They meet when they arrive in a formerly German village in Silesia, falling in love and quickly marrying.

At first, they are happy together and well-suited for each other. Their happiness is picturesque, a stark contrast from the pain of the recently ended war: “As they sauntered about in their bright, clean fashionable clothes that seemed to give their faces a heavenly glow, the very sight of this self-possessed couple, perfectly stuck into the photograph that is the world, made you feel like kneeling down on the sidewalk at their feet and crossing yourself” (272). They are devoted to each other completely, their love on display.

Despite this, their relationship changes as they age, with work and health crises complicating their feelings for each other. When the wife grows ill, a lump found in her ovary, and the husband begins travelling for work, they drift apart. Both feel as though there is something missing, and both begin an affair with Agni, a mysterious character who appears as a man to the wife, and as a woman to the husband.

As the years pass, they grow so distant that their relationship can no longer rely on love: “A new phrase had crept into their speech, and they said it whenever any sort of problem came along—’Let’s stick together.’ ‘Let’s stick together,’ they told each other over and over, until it sounded like an incantation” (299). The couple do not tell each other that they love one another. Instead, they hold on to the mantra of sticking together. Despite their lack of romantic love, their lives are intertwined, and that is not something they are willing to unravel.

Agni is one of the most mysterious characters in the novel. Like Kummernis and Paschalis, Agni exists outside of the gender binary, appearing in the story as both genders. Despite this, the relationship Agni fosters with the wife and husband reveals what they both crave. The wife feels as though Agni heals her, offering her the support and strength her husband does not: “She felt that Agni was healing her. His gentle caresses were like a cool mint compress, his kisses were like a hot drink; thanks to him her body was getting stronger, pulling itself together and not yielding to decay” (287). Her desire for Agni keeps the wife from giving up and succumbing to her illness.

Meanwhile, her husband reacts to Agni in a similar way, craving her: “She was like water, she could always elude him if she wanted. He would never be able to catch up with her, to seize her and hold her. Whenever she stopped and flowed over him it was a miracle, and he drank her in until he was choking” (293). While the wife feels healed by Agni, the husband is sustained by her. He compares Agni to water, a vital need for survival. His desire to drink her until he chokes symbolizes the desperation with which he wants her, revealing the lack of love and desire between himself and his wife. In this way, Agni comes to symbolize the unfulfilled desire and loneliness that both husband and wife feel.

Marek Marek is another minor character who embodies the novel’s magical realism. He has an alcohol dependency and often feels depressed. He characterizes these feelings as being a bird trapped within him, fighting violently to escape. The pain he feels is the same as the bird, making his life difficult: “When he was sober he could feel the bird in every part of his body, just beneath the skin. Sometimes he even thought he was the bird, and then they suffered together” (19). While the notion that a bird trapped within someone is fantastical, the story of Kummernis challenges it. Kummernis once healed a person with an alcohol dependency by forcing a demon, in the shape of a bird, out of him. This therefore creates a space to reconsider the nature of Marek Marek’s struggle.