The badger
The badger is the poem’s protagonist and main character. Clare depicts him as extraordinarily resilient—despite a hoard of assailants, for hours he manages to give as good as he gets. He is also characterized as vicious and aggressive, a threat to the weaker members of the human community, like children and drunks, and a worthy opponent of dogs twice his size. At times, Clare seems to see a kind of nobility in this, but elsewhere the badger’s ferocious personality leads Clare to refer to him as a “blackguard,” or villain.
The dogs
The dogs are the badger’s immediate opponent. They are almost twice his size, but lack his bravery and ferociousness. In contrast to the badger, Clare doesn’t instill the dogs with much internal life—they mostly act as the tools of their human masters, with the exception of the end of the second stanza, where they cower before the badger.
The crowd
Humans in “The Badger” almost always act in groups. In the first stanza, a group of men accompany the dogs to pull the badger from his lair. In the second, a crowd of both men and women flee the badger, while in the third all the “women” flee with their “boys.” Although they are responsible for the badger’s flight, in the poem the members of the crowd are mostly passive victims of the badger’s aggression.
The drunkard
The drunkard is one of the only individual human beings in “The Badger.” He is particularly vulnerable to the badger’s aggression, and stumbles, swearing, away from him when he attacks the crowd.
The poacher
Along with the drunkard, the poacher is one of the few individual human beings Clare writes about in “The Badger.” In the first stanza, he overhears the dogs in the woods and panics, shooting at a hare but failing to kill it as he rushes off.
