Jessie is a woman in her late thirties or early forties who lives with her mother in a rural house. Suffering from severe, untreated chronic depression and epilepsy, she finds no joy or hope in her daily existence. Rather than seeking a rescue, she approaches her final evening with methodical calmness, checking off practical household chores to ensure her mother is prepared for her absence. She views her planned suicide as the one definitive choice she can control.

Thelma is a widow in her late fifties or early sixties who dreads death and clings fiercely to the small comforts of life. She talks constantly to fill silence and often exaggerates stories to make her isolated reality more interesting. When her daughter announces a plan to die, Thelma frantically cycles through bargaining, guilt, and threats to stop her, unable to comprehend a desire to abandon life.

Dawson is Thelma's son and Jessie's brother. He represents the outside world and practical intervention, often serving as the person Thelma calls when Jessie has a seizure. He tries to manage his mother's affairs, which makes Jessie feel uncomfortably exposed to his scrutiny.

Loretta is Dawson's wife. She frequently buys thoughtless gifts for Jessie, such as slippers in her own size rather than Jessie's. Both Thelma and Jessie view her as condescending, feeling that she considers herself superior to them.

Ricky is Jessie and Cecil's teenage son. He has turned to a life of petty crime and recently stole the only valuable rings his mother owned. While Thelma holds onto a naive hope that he will reform, Jessie accepts his criminal nature as a permanent failure.

Cecil is Jessie's ex-husband and a carpenter by trade. He divorced Jessie shortly after her epilepsy emerged following a horseback-riding accident. He struggles with guilt over the accident and hates seeing the lives he attempts to build fall apart.

Thelma's late husband and Jessie's father was a quiet, withdrawn man who suffered from undiagnosed seizures. He spent his time sitting by the lake pretending to fish or fashioning pipe-cleaner figures, sharing a silent kinship with his daughter that entirely excluded his wife.

Agnes is a long-time friend of Thelma. Thelma claims Agnes was a childhood firebug who burned down several dilapidated houses. Agnes refuses to visit the Cates home because she is superstitiously afraid of Jessie, claiming the younger woman's cold hands feel like death.