gives Tarwater a ride into the city. Meeks believes that the value of loving other people is that you can sell them things. He also values machines and hard work, and had he not had a rendezvous scheduled with a girlfriend, he would have pressured Tarwater to work for him.

Lucette Carmody

Lucette Carmody, a child evangelist since the age of six. Now eleven or twelve years old, she has a physical disability in her legs. She travels with her parents, also evangelists. Her sermon focuses on the Massacre of the Innocents. Although Rayber thinks he can connect with her emotionally, she calls him damned. She may serve as a role model for Tarwater.

Bernice Bishop

Known as “the welfare woman” by Mason Tarwater and his great-nephew Francis Marion Tarwater, Bernice Bishop is the mother of the mentally disabled boy, Bishop, and the ex-wife of George Rayber. Bernice appears only in the novel’s flashbacks. In one flashback, it is revealed that Rayber tried to "rescue" the young Tarwater from his uncle, with his wife accompanying him. She was disgusted by the boy’s blank reaction to his great-uncle’s violence and declared she could not live with him. Although Bernice is a trained social worker, she left Rayber after their "dim-witted" son was born, partly because the son reminded her of Mason Tarwater. Rayber also recalls that Bernice has returned only once in the past two years, solely to request that their son be institutionalized.

Lucette Carmody

Lucette is an eleven or twelve-year-old girl who preaches about Jesus’ love and the Second Coming at a Christian revival meeting. She notices George Rayber hiding outside a window and calls him a “damned soul.” Echoing old Tarwater’s words, she tells him, “The Word of God is a burning Word to burn you clean.” Rayber believes she is being exploited by adults, which reminds him of his own childhood.

Meeks

Meeks is a copper flue salesman who gives young Tarwater a ride into the city after he sets fire to his great-uncle Tarwater’s house. Described as both a “stranger” and “friend,” Meeks is one of several devil incarnations the boy encounters. Driven by his love of money, he claims he loves the people he sells to. His conversations about love and technology parody George Rayber’s views. Meeks intends to exploit Tarwater’s naivety for his own gain.

Buford Munson

The novel’s first sentence introduces “a Negro named Buford Munson,” who buries the elder Tarwater because Francis Marion Tarwater is too drunk to complete the task. Upon returning to Powderhead at the novel’s end, the young Tarwater learns from Munson that the old man has indeed been buried with a cross over him, anticipating the Resurrection.

Luella Munson

Luella Munson is Buford Munson’s daughter. Francis Marion Tarwater discovers that she cared for George Rayber while Rayber’s mother, Mason Tarwater’s sister, “sat in her nightgown all day drinking whiskey out of a medicine bottle.”

Bishop Rayber

Bishop is the mentally disabled and mute son of George Rayber, a schoolteacher, and Bernice Bishop. He is innocent, uninhibited, and largely oblivious to his surroundings. The novel focuses more on how others react to him rather than his own actions. His great-uncle, Mason Tarwater, once attempted to kidnap and baptize Bishop as a baby, but his father intervened, refusing to subject his son to what he considered a meaningless ritual. Bishop's mother left him in his father's care. George Rayber struggles with his feelings for Bishop and once tried to drown him but couldn't go through with it. The novel's protagonist, Francis Marion Tarwater, who is Bishop's cousin, sees it as his mission to baptize him. Bishop is repeatedly drawn to water throughout the story, and in the end, he is baptized and subsequently drowned by the younger Tarwater.

George Rayber

Known as “the schoolteacher” by his uncle, Mason Tarwater, and his great-nephew, Francis Marion Tarwater, George Rayber represents earthly knowledge and rationalist beliefs that starkly contrast with the Tarwaters' spiritual views. According to Mason Tarwater, Rayber’s mother (Tarwater’s sister) was a negligent woman who spent her days reading and drinking whiskey, ignoring her son. His father, an insurance salesman, was often absent. At age seven, Rayber was kidnapped and baptized by Mason Tarwater. When his parents came to retrieve him four days later, Rayber did not want to leave. However, he later renounced his uncle’s teachings and returned at fourteen to declare his disbelief. About ten years later, Rayber’s cousin died in a car accident shortly before giving birth to Francis Marion Tarwater, whom Rayber then took in to raise. Mason Tarwater, newly released from a mental asylum, moved in with Rayber and became the subject of a story Rayber published in a “schoolteacher magazine.” Enraged, Mason kidnapped the baby and warned Rayber: “THE PROPHET I RAISE OUT OF THIS BOY WILL BURN YOUR EYES CLEAN.” Rayber and his wife tried to rescue young Tarwater but abandoned their efforts after Mason shot Rayber twice, leaving him deaf in one ear and with a permanent limp. Rayber has a young son, the “idiot child” Bishop.

Rayber oversees his school's testing program, adhering to contemporary rationalist and psychological theories that he believes can quantify and assess human desires and motivations. Although he dismisses the spiritual, he is continually drawn to it. Logic dictates that his intellectually disabled son is useless to both him and others, yet Rayber feels an overwhelming love for the boy. This love is one of the reasons why Rayber's attempt to drown his son failed. Rayber wears thick glasses and uses an electric hearing aid that he can switch on and off—physical symbols of the modern rationalist who has eyes but does not see and ears but does not hear. Rayber embodies not only the archetypal modern man but also the Pharisee and the devil, as he strives to persuade Francis Marion Tarwater that he has been misled by false religious beliefs and attempts to provide him with a secular education.

The Stranger/The Friend

Throughout the novel, Francis Marion Tarwater is guided by an “inner voice” of a stranger or friend aiming to divert him from the path of righteousness. This voice represents the devil, who later physically manifests as the man who rapes him at the novel’s conclusion—the man in the lavender shirt and Panama hat, driving a lavender and cream-colored car.

Francis Marion Tarwater

Francis Marion Tarwater, often simply called “Tarwater,” is the novel's protagonist. His journey to the city to baptize his cousin forms the core of the narrative. He is a stern, frequently silent teenager, yet an undercurrent of violence simmers beneath his stoic exterior. Tarwater was born in a car accident that killed both his parents. He was initially taken in by his uncle, the schoolteacher George Rayber, but was subsequently kidnapped by his great-uncle Mason Tarwater, a self-proclaimed prophet. Mason raised his great-nephew in the seclusion of Powderhead, a clearing deep in the Alabama woods, with the intention of grooming him to be a prophet. Before Mason Tarwater dies, he instructs his great-nephew to give him a proper Christian burial and charges him with the mission of baptizing his cousin, the mentally impaired boy Bishop. However, an inner voice of a “stranger”—later referred to as a “friend”—advises Tarwater to forsake this duty. In response, Tarwater burns down his great-uncle’s house and heads to the city.

In the city, Tarwater battles the urge to carry out the baptism his great-uncle instructed. He also resists the rationalist teachings of his uncle, Rayber, and feels both repelled by and attracted to Bishop. Gradually, Tarwater realizes he is there to baptize the boy after all. However, he still heeds the advice of his “friend,” who tries to dissuade him from his mission. This voice, representing the devil, tempts Tarwater throughout the novel. Ultimately, Tarwater drowns Bishop but baptizes him just before doing so. He then flees to Powderhead, experiences a vision, and returns to the city to embrace his role as a prophet of God.

Tarwater is intricate and challenging to define, reflecting the novel’s complex themes and narrative style. The name “Tarwater” combines two contrasting elements: one dark and impenetrable, the other purifying. The boy is simultaneously a wilderness prophet and a bewildered rural youth with a deep spiritual hunger, emphasized by the book’s frequent mentions of his physical hunger. He may seem naive, yet his rejection of modern society is clear and articulate. Though he tries to refuse his uncle’s spiritual legacy, he cannot escape it. He grapples with the choice between serving the devil and serving God, discovering that following God involves violence and irrationality. He is both violent and a victim of violence—he sets a house on fire, commits murder, and is raped. He embodies the prophet Elisha, succeeding his great-uncle, a modern-day Elijah; he is akin to St. Christopher as he baptizes and then drowns his cousin; he is John the Baptist, preparing the way. By the novel’s end, he unknowingly performs an act that solidifies his prophetic status, finally accepting his role as God’s messenger.

Mason Tarwater

Mason Tarwater, referred to as the “old man” who sees himself as a prophet, serves as the great-uncle and spiritual mentor to Francis Marion Tarwater, the protagonist of the novel. Mason entrusts his great-nephew with the mission of baptizing his cousin, the intellectually disabled boy named Bishop. The story begins with Mason Tarwater’s death. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn how Mason kidnapped his great-nephew from his nephew, George Rayber, a schoolteacher, and raised him to be a prophet to continue his divine work. The young Tarwater also recalls that the old man had been confined to an insane asylum for four years by his sister. After his release, Mason stayed with Rayber, but Rayber was secretly studying him to write an article for a “schoolteacher’s magazine,” portraying him as a fanatic and a relic of a nearly extinct breed. Enraged, Mason, who had previously kidnapped and baptized Rayber as a child, abducted Francis Marion to groom him as a prophet to “burn [Rayber’s] eyes clean.” When Rayber tried to rescue the boy, Mason shot him, causing Rayber to lose some hearing and walk with a limp.

Despite his eccentricities, Mason Tarwater is depicted as God’s emissary in the novel and one of the two forces vying for Francis Marion Tarwater’s soul. Francis Marion battles against his great-uncle’s teachings but finds himself unable to completely reject them. Mason is often contrasted with Rayber, who symbolizes the devil. Mason dismisses modernity and rationalism, upholds fundamentalist religious beliefs, and values actions over words. He saw himself as the prophet Elijah and his great-nephew as his successor, Elisha. Mason protected the boy from what he considered the corrupting influences of the city—modern life and secular, rationalist thinking. He had little patience for those who ignored the divine word, often calling people “asses or whores.” Young Tarwater remembers the old man vanishing into the woods for days, returning looking “as if he had been wrestling a wild cat, as if his head were still full of the visions he had seen in his eyes. . . .” Mason is portrayed as a true prophet of the wilderness, who understands the violence and irrationality inherent in any genuine spiritual journey.

The Truck Driver

One of the three drivers in the novel representing the devil, the truck driver gives Francis Marion a lift back to Powderhead after he murders the boy Bishop. The truck driver is apathetic and seeks someone to converse with to stay awake while driving. His indifference mirrors that of George Rayber, the novel’s primary representation of the devil.