Monsieur François Marin
Monsieur François Marin is the teacher of the class the book is focused on. He is a French teacher and is energetic. Although he wishes his class the best, he doesn’t know how to go through and help them the best he can, as they have a lot of problems and turmoil between them. He doesn’t wish to be hard on the students, though his patience wears thin towards the end of the book, where he nearly acts as badly as his pupils.
Esmeralda
Esmeralda is a smart and honorable girl, and from the way she is described by Marin, it is safe to assume that she is rich. She is impatient as for the other pupil’s learning pace, as it is a lot slower than hers. She doesn’t wait to speak up, making sure she never is looked passed, though she sometimes might appear arrogant and stuck up.
Souleyman
Souleyman is a boy in Marin’s class, and he is the one at the back of the classroom that will not stop speaking. He is a black young child, an immigrant to France from Mali with Muslim traits. He doesn’t manage to focus on a task over a long period of time, is very bad at written French, and doesn’t hand in his school assignments on time, though that doesn’t seem to bother him.
