The narrator’s father in “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” often referred to simply as Ba, is a survivor of the Mỹ Lai massacre as a teenager whose life has been permanently shaped by war. Although he initially appears distant and emotionally inaccessible, he gradually emerges as a complex figure. He often communicates through Vietnamese proverbs, a habit his son dismisses but which is a shield for his deep-seated pain. His manner is quiet, and his smile is ambiguous, making his motivations difficult for Nam, and the reader, to interpret. He embodies the long-term psychological consequences of war, carrying experiences that cannot be easily expressed.

Ba is both a father figure to Nam and a living embodiment of history. His arrival in Iowa disrupts Nam’s carefully constructed life, forcing him to confront the heritage he has distanced himself from. At the same time, his testimony exposes the limitations of language in representing extreme trauma. Even as he agrees to tell his story, he warns his son, “[B]elieve me, it’s not something you’ll be able to write” (24), suggesting that lived experience cannot be fully translated into fiction. 

Ba’s decision to burn Nam’s manuscript is the story’s climax. Rather than rejecting his son, Ba asserts ownership over his own trauma and rejects its use as simply an “ethnic” story. In doing so, he shows that storytelling has its ethical limits and that some forms of suffering cannot be neatly transformed into art. Through Ba, Le explores the enduring effects of war and the silences that often define relationships between generations, underscoring the theme of the burden of familial legacy.

The protagonist of “Cartagena,” 14-year-old Ron is a sicario, or hitman, in Medellín, Colombia. As a dynamic and round character, he exemplifies the theme of The Sacrifice of Innocence for Survival, having entered a life of contract killing after his father’s death in order to support his mother. Despite his violent profession, he retains a strong sense of loyalty and an underlying moral awareness, creating constant internal conflict between the role he performs and the person he might otherwise have become.

Much of Ron’s identity is shaped by competing narratives about honor and purpose. His agent, El Padre, encourages him to see himself as part of a noble cause fought by a soldado, or soldier. Ron clings to this fiction while simultaneously dreaming of escaping to the coastal city of Cartagena, a place of freedom and purity beyond Medellín’s violence. In this way, his character highlights the theme of the illusion of escape. Together, his competing visions reveal a young man desperately searching for meaning within circumstances that offer him few genuine choices or any true escape.

Ron ultimately becomes a tragic figure because he cannot escape the system that has defined his life since childhood. His refusal to kill Hernando is a final, futile act of rebellion and his clearest moral stand, yet it also seals his fate. Cornered by El Padre and betrayed by his own gang that once protected him, he recognizes that there is no way out. His final act to use the grenade given to him by Claudia is therefore less an act of heroism than the inevitable consequences of a world that has denied him any meaningful alternative.

Hernando is Ron’s best friend in the story “Cartagena.” Once the leader of their gallada, he attempts to leave behind the life of a sicario. After he and Ron are forced to kill a corrupt policeman, Hernando rejects an offer to work for El Padre and instead joins an anti-violence program. In this way, he is one of the few characters in the collection who actively pursues redemption instead of merely dreaming about it.

Hernando serves as a foil to Ron, as his decision to change highlights how trapped Ron is in the violent system. His character highlights the possibility—however fragile—of breaking free from cycles of violence. He repeatedly urges Ron to abandon contract killings, exposing the false promises behind El Padre’s rhetoric of honor and loyalty. In doing so, he represents the future Ron longs for but ultimately cannot reach, reinforcing the theme of the illusion of escape.

At the same time, Hernando’s fate also underscores the limits of personal change within a violent society. Although he rejects his former life, his past continues to define him. When El Padre places a contract on his life, it demonstrates that leaving violence behind does not guarantee freedom from its consequences. His death serves as the catalyst for Ron’s final confrontation with El Padre and the tragic unraveling of his own life.

The primary antagonist of “Cartagena,” El Padre is a powerful and manipulative agent who employs young men like Ron as sicarios. Although he remains largely unseen until the story’s conclusion, his influence dominates the narrative from the outset. Stories of his ruthlessness—including his alleged involvement in the infamous assassination of a World Cup soccer player—give him a mythic reputation, allowing fear to become one of his most effective weapons. He presents himself as a paternal figure, a general to his soldados, and attempts to bond with Ron over their shared experience of losing their fathers. This is a calculated manipulation designed to ensure loyalty and obedience. In reality, he is a cold and pragmatic operator in the drug trade who views his employees as disposable assets. More than an individual villain, he represents the corrupt and inescapable power structure of Medellín, a force that both creates and destroys young men like Ron.

The protagonist of “Meeting Elise,” Henry is an aging, successful neo-figurative painter whose personal and creative life is in a state of decay. A round, dynamic character and an unreliable narrator, Henry is consumed by guilt over abandoning his wife and infant daughter, Elise, 17 years prior for his much younger model and lover, Olivia. Following Olivia’s death and his own health failing from what he learns may be colorectal cancer, he becomes determined to reconnect with the daughter he barely knows, hoping for reconciliation and redemption before he dies.

Henry’s character is defined by his self-pity and inability to take full responsibility for his actions. He romanticizes his past with Olivia while framing his ex-wife as a “witch” who “kidnapped” his daughter, minimizing his own responsibility for the family’s collapse. His physical ailments, particularly his painful hemorrhoids and the gradual loss of color from his vision, mirror his emotional and artistic decline. Unable to paint since Olivia’s death, Henry discovers that his creative block stems from an inability to confront the consequences of his own choices. 

Although Henry genuinely longs to reconnect with Elise, his attempts are continually undermined by his own self-centeredness. He drinks alcohol excessively, insults her fiancé, and repeatedly interprets events through the lens of his own regret rather than his daughter’s experience. His failure to achieve reconciliation ultimately reveals that redemption cannot be earned through good intention alone. Instead, Henry becomes a tragic portrait of a man who recognizes his mistakes only after years of absence have made them impossible to undo.

Henry’s estranged daughter in “Meeting Elise,” Elise is an internationally acclaimed cello prodigy whose long absence from her father’s life has left little possibility for genuine intimacy. Although she is a relatively flat character, this is largely because readers encounter her almost entirely through Henry’s unreliable perspective. Having been raised in Russia by her mother, she has no emotional connection to her father. When he attempts to force a reunion, she is cold and distant, refusing to meet him for lunch and communicating primarily through her fiancé, Jason. Her demand that Henry arrange a “payment plan for the Guadagnini” (88), the $500,000 cello he purchased for her as a child, emphasizes her view of their relationship. She reduces their connection to a financial transaction, rejecting his bid for an emotional reconciliation and denying him the absolution he seeks.

In this way, Elise serves as a constant reminder of the consequences of Henry’s past actions. Instead of being a true antagonist, she is an embodiment of Henry’s unresolved guilt. Her refusal to grant him forgiveness forces him to confront a painful reality: While parents often hope reconciliation remains possible, children are under no obligation to provide the closure they seek. Through Elise, Le highlights the theme of the burden of familial legacy, illustrating how some familial wounds cannot be healed simply because one party finally wishes they could be.

The protagonist of “Halflead Bay,” Jamie is a teenage Australian rules football player preparing for his high school’s championship season while coping with his other’s terminal illness. A round and dynamic character, he struggles to reconcile the pressures of small-town masculinity with his own instinct to avoid violence. His fear of confronting Alison’s volatile boyfriend, Dory Townsend, becomes a source of public embarrassment as well as his own private shame, leaving him to question whether he is, as he fears, “gutless.” His journey is one of redefining what courage actually requires and how it is defined. 

Jamie’s internal life is shaped by his complex family dynamics. He feels a deep, unspoken grief for his dying mother and a sense of alienation from his stoic father. He frequently feels as though he has failed to earn his father’s approval, such as in the opening lines, where he receives an honor for his success in the football game. As the crowd cheers and he swells with pride, he notes, “Still, his dad. Seated in the front row with the other guests of honor—unimpressed as ever. His smile as stiff as his suit” (94). As a result of this emotional turmoil, Allison’s attention offers both romantic excitement and a temporary escape from the grief that dominates his home life. This relationship also forces Jamie into choices he would otherwise avoid, gradually stripping away the possibility of remaining a passive observer. 

By the story’s conclusion, Jamie discovers that fighting Dory over Alison is not how true courage should be defined. Instead, he learns the value of enduring hardship alongside those he loves. The confrontation with Dory ultimately reveals the strength of his relationship with his father and brother, whose support replaces the isolated version of masculinity Jamie has long believed he must embody. Jamie matures into someone who recognizes that resilience often depends upon vulnerability, family, and mutual support—rather than physical dominance.

Alison is Jamie’s love interest in “Halflead Bay” and the catalyst for the story’s central conflict. Although she initially appears to fit the archetype of the unattainable, rebellious girl, Le gradually reveals a more conflicted character whose outward confidence masks genuine dissatisfaction. She initiates the flirtation with Jamie, seemingly for the thrill of it, and intentionally provokes Dory’s jealousy. However, her actions are also driven by unhappiness, as she reveals to Jamie that her relationship with Dory is emotionally empty and that she is drawn to Jamie because she believes “it’s different with [him]” (131). These moments complicate any straightforward reading of her as either temptress or victim.

Rather than existing solely as the catalyst for violence, Alison exposes the emotional limitations of the community’s narrow expectations surrounding gender and relationships. While she instigates the violence between the two boys, she is also a victim of the toxic masculinity that defines their world, trapped between Dory’s coldness and Jamie’s fear. She seeks authenticity but repeatedly falls back on these behaviors that reinforce the very conflicts she wishes to escape. Through Alison, Le shows how emotional dissatisfaction can be just as confining as the physical threats surrounding Jamie.

Mayako is the 17-year-old narrator of “Hiroshima” who recounts the events leading up to the atomic bombing from the limited perspective of a child evacuated to a Buddhist temple outside the city. Her innocence is the story’s defining literary device, as she interprets the world through sensory memories. The taste of soybean rice, the sounds of different cicadas, the memory of her mother’s smell, and more define her perspective, while at the same time she unquestioningly accepts the wartime propaganda she is taught. She chants slogans like “Honorable death before surrender!” and plays games of war where she imagines dying gloriously for the Emperor (176), an indoctrination which evokes the theme of the sacrifice of innocence for survival.

Mayako functions as an innocent witness whose limited understanding heightens the emotional impact of the story. Her final command to “look here,” immediately before the world dissolves into blinding white, serves as an ordinary childhood gesture that becomes a haunting ending instead. Through Mayako, Le demonstrates how innocence can make historical catastrophe even more devastating, emphasizing how that innocence is destroyed, exposing everything that children are unable to comprehend before it is too late.

Sarah, from the story “Tehran Calling,” is an American lawyer who travels to Iran to visit her childhood friend, Parvin. Sarah’s motivations are twofold: She wishes to support Parvin, an activist, but she is also seeking an escape from the emotional wreckage of her breakup with her long-term partner, Paul. She initially approaches Tehran as both an outsider and observer, believing that physical distance from her personal life might offer emotional renewal. Her journey ultimately reflects the theme of the illusion of escape, as she finds that geographic distance itself does not provide relief from her personal turmoil.

As the story’s protagonist and a dynamic character, Sarah’s perspective changes throughout the course of the text as she begins to understand the violence of the Iranian regime. Initially, she is shaped by skepticism and emotional detachment. She struggles to understand Parvin’s political commitment, often viewing both her friend’s activism and the callers to the radio program with a degree of distance. As an American, Sarah assumes she occupies a position outside Iran’s political realities, allowing her to observe events without becoming fully implicated in them. However, Sarah’s detachment gradually erodes as she is confronted with the realities of the regime’s power. Witnessing a violent crackdown by the Ansar-e Hezbollah militia in a public square, where she and the activist Mahmoud are nearly arrested, shatters her sense of safety and forces her to confront the very real danger her friends face. Although she never becomes the committed activist Parvin hopes she will be, Sarah finishes the story with a more complicated understanding of both herself and the country she has briefly inhabited. Rather than finding either political certainty or personal closure, she learns that some forms of distance—whether emotional or geographical—cannot be maintained indefinitely.

Parvin is Sarah’s best friend in “Tehran Calling.” She is an Iranian American activist who hosts a shortwave radio show advocating for women’s rights. She has recently returned to Tehran to engage in activism on the ground. She is passionate, principled, and often reckless, driven by a traumatic past in which her brothers were killed in the Iran-Iraq War, and she was forced to flee the country. Her commitment to political change reflects both idealism and unresolved grief, making activism inseparable from her own search for purpose.

Parvin’s uncompromising idealism and political zeal frequently place her at odds with those around her. She dismisses Sarah’s comfortable American life as “useless,” while Mahmoud repeatedly questions the practicality of her confrontational strategies. At the same time, her willingness to arrange a marriage with Mahmoud to facilitate his escape from Iran reveals both her vulnerability and her pragmatism, showing her complexity beyond just being a fearless revolutionary. Through Parvin, Le explores the cost of dedicating one’s life to political resistance. She inspires those around her while simultaneously exposing them to significant danger, illustrating how courage and recklessness can go hand-in-hand.

A young Iranian activist in “Tehran Calling,” Mahmoud is both Sarah’s guide through Tehran and Parvin’s ideological foil. As the son of a high-ranking cleric, he has rejected many of the political and religious views associated with his family while still being shaped by them. This complicated relationship makes him an embodiment of the theme of the burden of familial legacy, as he cannot fully escape the influence of the family whose beliefs he actively opposes. Despite being estranged from his father due to his political activities, he uses his family name to save Sarah from being arrested by the religious militia. This act reveals his internal conflict, as he must rely on the very system he is fighting against in order to survive. 

Unlike Parvin, Mahmoud approaches political resistance cautiously and strategically. He is critical of Parvin’s plan to stage a provocative play during the holy week of Ashura, arguing that it is disrespectful and strategically foolish. In this way, his pragmatism provides a counterbalance to both Parvin’s idealism and Sarah’s initial detachment. His character reveals the complex realities of being a young dissident in Iran, caught between religious tradition, political oppression, and a desire for a different future.

The 16-year-old protagonist of “The Boat,” Mai is a Vietnamese refugee fleeing her home after her parents send her away in hopes of securing her future. A round and dynamic character, her journey begins in a state of confusion and fear, having been sent away with little explanation. Aboard the dangerously overcrowded boat, she is initially an isolated observer, grappling with the trauma of her sudden displacement and the memories of her family she has left behind. Her journey on the boat is both physical and emotional as the story explores her confrontation with fear, grief, and responsibility in rapid succession.

Central to Mai’s change in “The Boat” is her growing relationship with fellow refugee Quyen and her young son, Truong. Caring for the sick boy gradually shifts her attention away from her own suffering toward the needs of others. She shares precious water, nurses him through illness, and comforts him through song, assuming a nurturing role that contrasts sharply with her initial uncertainty and distance. Through her compassion, Mai begins to process her own feelings of loss and separation while discovering resilience she did not know she possessed. After Truong’s death, she leads the devastated Quyen to the bow of the boat so they can face the approaching shoreline together rather than watch his body disappear into the sea. This act reflects the mature strength she has acquired through suffering. Mai ultimately emerges as someone whose humanity has endured despite extraordinary hardship.