Carolyn Forche
Forche is the narrator of most of her poems. She has a voice defined by humanist values. She considered it her duty to bear witness to all of the people she met and places she visited in her career as a sort of poetic journalist. In her travels she encounters many of the more gruesome and evil parts of this world, intent on shedding light on the dark places. Her own character in her poems remains more witness than judge, until some of her later poems. For the most part she keeps her opinions out of her writing, but she describes her experiences in such a way that any conscientious reader must agree that the humanist answer is the necessary response.
The Colonel
Trigger Warning: Violence
While visiting El Salvador on a relief mission, Forche is invited to the home of a colonel who runs one of the prisons. He is an angry paranoid man who has implanted shards of glass and pottery into the exterior walls of his home in order to maim intruders. When Forche talks about her purpose for visiting El Salvador he becomes enraged and throws a bag of severed human ears down onto the table in front of her. His message is clear: he doesn't value human life. This is described in "The Colonel."
Elena
Elena is person Forche met in Buenos Aires, featured in the poem "In Memory of Elena." She and her husband were the victims of street violence. One second she's standing beside her lover, sharing a special moment, and the next she's supporting his limp weight as he falls to the ground. As Forche describes, she was a victim by design of whatever political ills befell that place.
The Girl from "The Ghost of Heaven"
Trigger Warning: Violence
In this poem Forche describes a horrific battlefield. She and some companions are searching for a pregnant girl who they believe got caught up in the violence. When they find her, she's dead, and her killers have sliced open her womb and inserted an anonymous man's severed head. Oddly enough the people who find her catch themselves feeling relieved at the sight; she hadn't been pregnant after all. Forche describes her vision of the girl's spirit rising out of her body and approaching them. She became a sort of phoenix and a savior figure, transcending death.
The Boatman
This character is the narrator of "The Boatman." Caught up in a war-torn place (probably in the Middle East, possibly Mecca), the boatman and his companions read leaflets which have been dropped to warn them to evacuate. Nobody knows where to go, so the boatman finds himself or herself in charge of a group of refugees. He or she compares himself or herself to a boatman ferrying people to safety, but not literally. The boatman is the refugee's leader, their guide to a safer home.
