Ásta Sollilja is the novel’s deuteragonist and a foil to her stepfather, Bjartur. Her role is established from her birth through her name, which translates to “Beloved Sun-lily.” Bjartur thinks of her as his “one flower,” representing the sole source of tenderness and fragile beauty in his relentlessly harsh world. She embodies the emotional life and human connection that Bjartur’s rigid ideology forces him to sacrifice. Her childhood is shaped by a burgeoning imagination and a deep yearning for a life beyond the oppressive confines of Summerhouses. This desire is captured in her awe at her first sight of the ocean, which her father explains has “The foreign countries on the other side… the kingdoms” (196). This sense of wonder and romanticism contrasts sharply with Bjartur’s grim pragmatism, establishing the central conflict between feeling and principle that defines their relationship.

Despite her romantic nature, Ásta Sollilja develops her own formidable independence, a trait she inherits from Bjartur himself. After Bjartur casts her out into a winter storm upon discovering her pregnancy, she endures immense hardship and rejects his later overture or reconciliation with scorn.

Ásta Sollilja’s role is as a testament to the consequences of Bjartur’s cruelty and his lack of empathy, especially for the female experience. She continually suffers due to his lack of understanding, from the traumatic night with Bjartur in the lodging house that foreshadows her later suffering, to her pregnancy, exile, and subsequent abandonment by the baby’s father. Her existence is a constant struggle against poverty, illness, and heartbreak, showing that her own ability for “independence” is limited by the claims of men. While Bjartur fights against abstract forces like debt and superstition, Ásta’s battles are deeply personal and human, making her an image of sacrificed love and the devastating human cost of an uncompromising ideology. Her final, desperate journey back to Bjartur is a last, tragic search for the paternal connection that was denied her, only found when she is on the verge of death.

Bjartur’s consecutive wives, Rosa and Finna, are tragic figures who represent the immense human cost of his unyielding ideology of independence. Though their personalities differ, both serve as foils to Bjartur’s ideological approach by presenting the practical realities of shared survival. Both act in the novel primarily as victims of Bjartur’s inflexibility, suffering illness, starvation and, ultimately, death, as a result. Rosa and Finna’s character arcs enable the novel to explore Bjartur’s approach to marriage and to women: Although Bjartur wishes to benefit from his wives’ company and labor, he is unwilling to compromise with them over any decisions or actions, treating their most essential needs as secondary to his patriarchal rights to “independence.”

Rosa’s character is defined by a quiet suffering that Bjartur dismisses as “nerves,” but is a physical response to emotional and material deprivation at Summerhouses. The early chapters trace her decline from a “girl with a fresh complexion” to “a middle-aged woman, a slattern in an old sackcloth apron (41). Her need during pregnancy for meat and milk are refused by Bjartur and her death in childbirth is the consequence of his lack of suitable provision for her. Finna, Bjartur’s second wife, is a gentler woman who brings a quiet tenderness to the croft before she too is consumed by its harshness. Finna’s suffering is expressed through a passive, almost spiritual resignation. Her most significant relationship becomes that with the cow, Bukolla, who represents the maternal and familial instincts that Bjartur’s philosophy cannot accommodate. Her decline and death are directly linked to Bjartur’s perverse slaughter of the cow, making her a second wifely sacrifice to Bjartur’s ideal of independence.

The family of Rauthsmyri, comprised of Bailiff Jon; his wife, known as “the poetess”; and their son, Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, form a collective antagonist in the novel. They represent the social and economic structure against which Bjartur defines his independence. Bailiff Jon is the embodiment of the cold, pragmatic power of the landowning class. He is Bjartur’s former master, and his miserly, exploitative nature provides the initial impetus for Bjartur’s quest for freedom. His wife, the poet-mistress, represents the hypocritical, romantic facade of this same power. At Bjartur’s wedding, she delivers a long, patronizing speech extolling the virtues of the simple country life, utterly ignoring the brutal reality of the crofters’ existence. She turns their suffering into a literary ideal, a form of aesthetic consumption that underscores the vast gulf between her class and theirs. Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson bridges these two worlds and embodies the evolution of their power. As the biological father of Ásta Sollilja, he symbolically continues the power-bond between the households of master and servant through his latent prior claim over Rosa and Ásta.

Although the novel shows the Rauthsmyri family to be corrupt and hypocritical, the ending emphasizes that Bjartur’s downfall is of his own making, rather than theirs as active antagonists. By drawing on the biblical parable of the “man who sowed his enemy’s field,” (481) Laxness makes explicit that it is Bjartur’s embittered reaction to Rauthsmyri and what they stand for that causes him to ruin his own opportunities.

Bjartur’s sons represent three distinct responses to the harsh world of Summerhouses and three potential paths away from their father’s control to an “independence” of their own. Helgi, the eldest, is a troubled, gnomic philosopher who is psychologically damaged by the death of his mother, Finna. He cannot reconcile the cruelty of life with his search for meaning and his eventual disappearance into the snow is taken to be suicide, representing a nihilistic surrender to the natural forces that Bjartur spends his life fighting. Gvendur is the most pragmatic of the sons, sharing his father’s work ethic and connection to the land but lacking his rigid ideology. Although Gvendur acts as a crucial intermediary between Bjartur and Ásta Sollilja near the end, his failure to emigrate through folly and his vagrancy after Bjartur’s bankruptcy presents him as a product of Bjartur’s stubbornness and his own lack of will.

Nonni, the youngest son, is the recipient of a prophecy delivered to his mother by an “elf-lady” that “when he grows older he will sing for the whole world” (149). This explicitly frames him as the artist who will escape the brutal cycle of Summerhouses not merely by leaving, but by transforming his family’s suffering into art. Subtle hints throughout the narrative suggest that Nonni is the eventual author of Independent People itself. His character supports the theme of Poetry as a Tool for Survival, Escapism, and Meaning giving retrospective meaning to his family’s narrative.