Mala
Mala is the son of Americanized Indian immigrants being raised by her father Chandin. When Chandin's life disappoints him, he betrays his overly religious sentiments and self-destructs, toxifying his home with abuse and sexual assault. Mala grows up with her siblings being raped constantly—he picked a different child to be his victim every night. Mala is deemed unfit to stand trial for murdering her father in a rampage and for keeping his rotting body. Mala meets Tyler, the narrator, at a charity home where she lives with other mentally dependent wards of the state.
Chandin
Chandin is Mala's father. We see a significant portion of his story unfolding from his youth to his full adult personality. He is given away by his parents who "give him to the Lord" following their conversion to Christianity. Secretly, Chandin is adopted for appearances by a highly religious man (the reverend who converted his parents). Chandin falls in love with the preacher's daughter, his adoptive sister, but she denies him because she is secretly gay, sleeping with Chandin's would-be wife instead. Chandin spirals when he figures this all out, and he becomes a drunkard and a hateful rapist of his own children.
Lavinia
Lavinia is Chandin's femme fatale, the one who got away. According to archetypal motif, she should be his soul mate, but she isn't attracted to him, either personally or because of her different sexual orientation. Lavinia is attracted to Chandin's second choice, a wife he does not really love. Together, the three form a love triangle where the only unhappy person is Chandin. Lavinia is a symbol for Chandin's sociopathy because when he does not get to have her, he plays the victim of her suffering and turns into a villain in his own home using the entitlement that victimhood might give him.
Ambrose
Ambrose is a boy in the community. It is revealed that Mala fell in love with Ambrose. As young lovers, they loved to dance, and when finally they decide to consummate their relationship, Mala is discovered by her father. The father violently asserts his dominion over her by raping her and beating her ruthlessly. Ambrose has a son named Otoh who is a major part of Mala's story later on. Ambrose is a character who witnesses the mistreatment that leads Mala to become mentally unwell.
Otoh
Otoh is a kind of savior in this book. Because he has intimate knowledge of the years of rape and abuse that Mala and her family endured at the hands of a hateful father, Otoh considers her murdering of her father as a morally complicated issue. He decides to intervene, lest the police treat her without knowledge of her life of suffering. Legally, she is clearly guilty of murder, but Otoh acts a kind of redeemer, burning the dead remains of her father along with the rest of her home. This saves her from a worse fate.
