flee to Mexico.

Taylor

Taylor, an attorney who speculates in real estate. Taylor has already cheated Weston out of five hundred dollars by selling him a worthless piece of desert real estate; now he is taking advantage of his intimate relationship with Ella to purchase the Tate property without the permission of Weston, whom Taylor has had declared mentally incompetent.

Ellis

Ellis, the owner of the Alibi Club. Wearing a shiny yellow shirt, tight pants, shiny shoes, many rings, and a gold necklace, Ellis is a burly man whose arms are covered with tattoos. Ellis has taken advantage of Weston’s drunkenness and indebtedness to purchase the Tate property for a mere fifteen hundred dollars.

Emerson

Emerson, a small man who, by blowing up the Tates’ car, reminds Weston of the consequences of not paying his debts.

Slater

Slater, the man who accompanies Ellis on his threatening visit.

Sergeant Malcolm

Sergeant Malcolm, a highway patrol officer who notifies Ella that Emma has been arrested. He will take no action against the other criminals, however, because that is not within his jurisdiction.

Ella
In "Curse of the Starving Class," Ella is the matriarch of the family. At the start of the play, she and her son Wesley are examining the pieces of the door that her husband Weston has destroyed. While Wesley appears upset with Ella for inciting Weston's anger, she insists that the blame lies solely with Weston. She quickly shifts topics, and throughout the play, she frequently changes her mood and focus, as if she wants to avoid being deeply affected by anything. Ella often disregards the immediate events around her. However, her tendency to revisit topics suggests she is merely trying to keep her emotions beneath the surface.

As the play progresses, it reveals Ella's true aspirations. She harbors little affection or respect for her husband. Without Weston's knowledge, she is attempting to sell their house with the lawyer Taylor's assistance and dreams of using the proceeds to travel to Europe. Although her love for Weston has faded by the time depicted in the play, she interacts with him almost tenderly in the third act. As the play concludes, she recalls the story about the lambs that Weston shares, telling Wesley that it "just went right through me."

Ellis
Ellis owns the Alibi Club, the bar where Weston frequently spends his time. Driven by greed, he seeks to exploit the family. He arrives at their house to claim it, as Weston has transferred the deed to him for $1500. Despite Weston being an alcoholic and intoxicated when he signed the agreement, Ellis refuses to void their deal. Though Weston's drinking is his own decision, Wesley and Ella clearly hold Ellis accountable for enabling his habit. While Ellis is at the house, he learns that Emma has vandalized his bar, prompting him to reclaim his money from Wesley and leave. Within the play's symbolic framework, Ellis embodies the greed of small business owners and the human tendency to exploit others. However, like many villains in this play, Ellis is a simplistic character, reminiscent of those found in B-grade films from the 1930s and 1940s.

Emerson
Emerson is a diminutive man to whom Weston owes a debt. He makes an appearance with Slater at the play's conclusion, where he destroys Weston’s car. Emerson is threatening and mocks the family’s misfortune. More so than Ellis, both he and his partner Slater are shallow characters, seemingly lifted straight from gangster films. Their presence is superfluous, their constant laughter amuses the audience yet serves no purpose, and the bloodied slaughtered lamb they carry is so blatantly and awkwardly symbolic that Shepard seems to be satirizing the audience’s expectation for a symbolic resolution.

Emma
Emma is the daughter of Weston and Ella and the sister of Wesley. She is likely around thirteen or fourteen years old, and as the play begins, she is starting to menstruate, echoing the ‘‘curse’’ mentioned in the title. Initially, she appears to be the quintessential American farm girl, raising chickens for 4-H and wearing her uniform. However, her character is much darker and more enigmatic, driven by forces she doesn't fully comprehend. She longs to escape the household and fantasizes about riding the family horse, traveling to Mexico, and becoming a mechanic. Midway through the play, offstage, she rides her horse into the Alibi Club and opens fire with a rifle. At the play's end, in an odd speech reminiscent of a poor gangster movie, she declares her intention to pursue a life of crime. She seemingly leaves the house, steals a car, which is promptly destroyed by Emerson and Slater. Whether or not she survives this event remains unknown, but as she is not intended to be a realistic character, her survival is of little consequence.

The chaotic family dynamics and the fragmented nature of their lives are mirrored in her behavior—erratic, violent, antisocial, seemingly influenced by images from television and action movies. In her desire to escape her doomed aspirations and her inclination toward violence, she embodies the family ‘‘curse,’’ the ‘‘nitroglycerine of the blood’’ referenced in the play.

Malcolm
Sergeant Malcolm arrives at the house in the second act to inform the family that he has apprehended Emma for her rampage at the Alibi Club. He serves purely as a plot device, lacking any character depth.

Slater
Slater is Emerson’s accomplice. He plays the subordinate role between the two and enters carrying the skinned lamb. Like Emerson, he is a typical character from a gangster movie, devoid of depth.

Taylor
Taylor is an attorney hired by Ella to assist with selling her house. As part of their business dealings, he appears to have also charmed Ella. It's revealed that Taylor sold worthless desert land to Weston, leading Weston to try to recover his money from the deal. Symbolically, Taylor embodies the real estate developers and speculators who drove the rapid suburban development of southern California's farmland during the 1940s and 1950s. More broadly, he represents the intrusion of exploitative capitalism into the lives of the poor and working class. On a deeper symbolic level, Taylor is another element of the "curse" that burdens this family. Like Ellis, Emerson, and Slater, Taylor is an invasive force that disrupts the family, causing it to deteriorate.

Wesley
Wesley is the teenage son of Weston and Ella, likely around seventeen years old, though his exact age isn't specified. He harbors resentment about his circumstances and dreams of escaping his family to venture to Alaska. While his mother, driven by romantic ideals, longs to escape to Europe's ancient lands, and his sister, influenced by thrillers, desires to lose herself in Mexico or small southern Californian towns, Wesley seeks a new frontier. His family has presumably pursued the frontier of southern California, which is quickly vanishing. However, due to the family's "curse," he is compelled to search for something new and untouched.

Wesley is the most physically present character in the play. As the curtain rises, he is engaged in manual labor, collecting broken door pieces into a wheelbarrow. In a startling scene soon after, he lowers his pants and urinates on his sister's 4-H project. Following this, he complains of hunger and is closely linked with the maggot-infested lamb he brings into the kitchen. His physical presence is potent and sometimes unsettling. Wesley also introduces a crucial theme to the play: germs and infections. In the first act, when his mother instructs him to take the lamb outside, he tells his sister that she is afraid of "Germs. The idea of germs. Invisible germs mysteriously floating around in the air. Anything's a potential carrier."

Weston
Weston is the father of Emma and Wesley. He is a violent alcoholic who is bitter about his family's financial struggles, leading him to spend his time drinking at the Alibi Club. He has gotten mixed up with gangsters and owes them a significant amount of money. In an attempt to resolve his financial woes, he sells his house to Ellis. Burdened by his family's curse, he becomes aggressive and even threatens to kill Taylor and his wife upon discovering their plan to sell the house. Previously, he had dealings with Taylor when he purchased a piece of property from him, only to find out during the play that the land he acquired is worthless.

Like Wesley, Weston grew up on a farm, and he shares memories of this with Wesley. In the first two acts, Weston often dwells on the past, recounting stories of his childhood and his wartime experiences. However, as the third act begins, Weston appears to have undergone a significant transformation: he is wearing clean, new clothes and has sobered up. He is seen folding laundry and conversing with the lamb. He starts to build, rather than destroy, a home and even tells Wesley about his plans to transform their land into an avocado orchard. Yet, there is an oddity to his narrative, as he shares with the lamb a story about castrating lambs and tossing their bloody testicles onto a roof. In the symbolic framework of the play, he embodies the man doomed by fate, whose attempts to protect his home or body from external threats are inevitably doomed to fail.