The Ritual

Hutch, whose nickname is H, is the eldest of the four friends. His wife is named Angie, he has “pale green [eyes] with long inky lashes and [is] almost too pretty for a man” (21), and lives happily in the English countryside. Before entering the woods, Hutch had spent “twenty years engaged in outdoor pursuits” (15). He is knowledgeable about the history of the land they are traveling through. As the leader of the group, Hutch “always invested himself wholly into anything he organized” (66). He is the one who suggests the shortcut through the virgin forest, hoping that they will have a chance to see things that other humans haven’t. However, the shortcut leads to his death and the deaths of his friends.

Hutch is Luke’s foil in terms of anger. Hutch experiences some anger, not as much as Luke, but manages it. Outwardly, Hutch “remain[s] enthusiastic, patient […] he could not take sides; could not allow division” (7). He knows there is tension between Luke and his other friends, and tries to keep the peace. Hutch also tries to calm his friends after they see the mutilated animal in the tree and discover the church.

While Hutch is the happiest and most emotionally stable member of the friend group, he is also the first to die. His sleepwalking actions of kneeling before a representation of the goat/human creature in the attic of the black house foreshadows his death. However, Hutch’s death is a surprising turn because Hutch, like Luke, is a point-of-view character, which tries to fool the reader into believing he will live longer than he does.

Dom, who is also known as Domja, is out-of-shape and 34 years old. Prior to the beginning of The Ritual, Dom has a wife named Gayle, three kids, and works as a “marketing director for a big bank [and has] a mouth like a hooligan” (22). His career and family make him a foil of Luke, but both men have unchecked anger. Dom chooses to calm his anger with alcohol. He is angry because he gave up the freedom that Luke has as a bachelor, only to lose his job and his wife before the trip to the Scandinavian forest. Luke doesn’t learn that Dom has lost the things that Luke envies until after they have a physical altercation.

After Hutch’s death, Luke is kinder to Dom. They share a cigarette, even though Dom doesn’t usually smoke because it is “their last little comfort from the other world” (200). This echoes how Luke shared cigarettes with Hutch, and is a sign of repairing his friendship with Dom after the fight. Luke and Dom also share an affectionate moment after they find Phil’s mutilated corpse in a tree.

Dom is taken from behind Luke when Luke painfully struggles to turn his neck because of a head injury. The creature stalks Luke, and Luke mistakes the creature’s smell for Dom’s body odor. Dom’s mutilated corpse appears outside the old woman’s house after she takes in Luke.

Phil is similar to Dom in that he had a successful career and family prior to the beginning of The Ritual. Both men are also not physically fit enough for the hiking trip. In addition to this, Phil has asthma and wears new shoes and jeans that give him blisters after only one day of hiking. Phil was once very wealthy, as he “[h]ad made a killing as a property developer in West London” (46). His wife is named Michelle. Luke slept with Michelle before she started dating Phil, but didn’t like her.

By the time of the trip, Phil has gone bankrupt and lost his wife to a divorce, like Dom. Hutch also withholds this information from Luke until after his fight with Dom. The dreams that the men have in the black house, “seemed to have affected Phil worse than the others” (68). Before they stay overnight in the house, Phil complains along with Dom about the difficulty of the hike and his injuries. After leaving the house, Phil becomes quieter and more withdrawn. The creature kills him when he is collecting firewood; he is the second character in the novel to die.

The unnamed, “small elderly woman” (263) owns the house where Luke is imprisoned in the second part of The Ritual. She is the kindest of Luke’s captors, feeding him stew, gently touching his face, and hugging him. Luke initially notes that she wears a “long black gown, which concealed her body right up to the furrowed chin, her little feet knocked loudly against the wooden floorboards” (263). This foreshadows how her feet are not human feet, but goat’s feet. Her “skin was grey and also yellowy in places” (264). Luke thinks she dislikes the black metal teens who are occupying her home and won’t let bad things happen to him.

Luke’s conception of the old woman as a kind grandmother is destroyed near the end of the novel. He realizes that she is an antagonist: She uses him to dispatch her unwanted guests, and plans to sacrifice him to the creature. She is “defined by this closeness to her dead. They existed continuously. She lived with the dead. Kept alive a bond with the dreadful things of another time” (334). The old woman is similar to the little people with animal parts who live in her attic. These people are the offspring of the creature, and Nevill subtly implies that she might be as well. This is because Luke sees that “At the end of her goatish legs were little white hooves. Her tiny loud feet” (393) when he kills her.

Loki and Fenris are part of a Norwegian black metal band called Blood Frenzy. Luke describes the group as “vandals; impatient, delinquent, angry. Misfits wanting to spit into the face of God, government, society, decency, and anything else that excluded them, or simply bored them” (349). They are some of the antagonists in The Ritual, and all seem to be in their teens. However, Loki is the most mature and intelligent. His name means “devil,” and he wears a goat’s head when Luke first sees him. Loki also wears white and black make-up, band t-shirts, and is covered with various Satanic and pagan tattoos. His girlfriend is Surtr.

Loki is a static character in the novel. He shares information about the creature with Luke, and Luke has moments when he likes Loki, despite Loki and the others holding him captive in the old woman’s house to be sacrificed to the creature. Loki describes how he and his friends changed before encountering Luke. They started out as Satanists, but evolved to worship Odin and now identify as Vikings when Luke meets them. Loki and his friends have killed nine people, burned churches, and upset the old woman whose house they inhabit. Luke shoots and kills Loki with his own gun near the end of the novel.

Fenris is the second member of Blood Frenzy that Luke meets and another static character who is an antagonist. He wears a lamb’s head when Luke first sees him, although Fenris says his name means “wolf.” Fenris’s make-up and tattoos are similar to Loki’s, but Fenris is less intelligent. Luke describes Fenris as an immature “oaf” (277) and “bully” (282). Fenris initially seems to want to be Luke’s friend because he is the third wheel to Loki and Surtr’s relationship, and because Luke works in a CD shop.

Fenris and his friends appear like “the cast of some degenerate Victorian pantomime, they crowded around the upright goat and issued across the bed a scent of disused props, of dusty backstage places, of old sweat” (255). They are self-consciously performing evil, but their performances before meeting Luke include killing people and destroying churches. Fenris carries a knife and kicks Luke in the face when Luke tries to escape. Luke stabs Fenris, shoots Loki, then kills Fenris.