Denise "Dennie" Miller
Dennie grew up in a middle-class, socially conservative household with parents who believe in the status quo. Her parents are suburban and stressed out; her little sister seems to look up to her, although Dennie is surprised that her return home creates a great deal of tension between Susie and herself.
Dennie has been living in a hippie colony with her boyfriend, Flack, and a collection of other men and women with whom she enjoys drugs and free love. She originally ran away from home after a terrible argument with her parents that started when they found her at home on the couch having sex. She felt constricted and treated as a child and so ran away to Los Angeles where she quickly fell into the hippie lifestyle.
Dennie feels that the media's portrayal of the counter culture is highly over-glamorized and she decides to return home because she doesn't want to do drugs anymore, but also because she is exhausted and worn down from never having any money and having to beg for food. She is also essentially law abiding which is making it hard to get by in a group of people who are turning to theft for food.
When Dennie returns home she is also making the decision to return to being the person that her parents want her to be. She becomes very clean-cut in both appearance and behavior and begins to act more like an additional parent to her younger sister than a trusted sibling confidante. This all seems a little hypocritical because she has been off and had her fun and now wants to prevent her sister from doing the same thing. She finds the stress of living such a between-the-lines existence almost overwhelming and sometimes has to blow off steam by doing seemingly strange things, such as swimming laps fully clothed in the middle of a party with her parents' friends.
Dennie ultimately becomes a Stepford-wife type of young woman and begins to repeat her mother's life, becoming a home-maker and walking the straight and narrow.
Susie Miller
When Dennie was home, Susie was always the "little sister" and with an older sibling to both look up to and confide in felt little need to rebel or carve out her own identity. She was rarely in trouble because she was able to experience things vicariously through Dennie; after Dennie leaves, her parents become more rigid in what they will accept from her, largely because they are afraid that being too lenient with Dennie caused her to run away when in fact it was the opposite. The harder they now try to crack down on Susie's behavior the more she pushes back against them.
When Dennie arrives home, Susie is initially excited because she has missed her and she feels that she now has someone in her corner, but the reality turns out to be different. In an effort to keep Dennie happy and make her want to stay at home, their parents tiptoe around her as though they are on eggshells, but find fault more and more with Susie, and drive her to want to run away herself. Her behavior deteriorates as she gets more addicted to drugs and she ultimately leaves with her boyfriend.
Claire and Ed Miller
Stressed out suburban parents Claire and Ed Miller have a very stereotypical view of the way in which their daughters should turn out. They still buy into gender stereotypes and so have in mind a future for both Dennie and Susie that includes settling down and taking care of the home, just like Claire does. Their stress begins to rise when they realize that this is not the vision of the future that their daughters have for themselves.
Neither parent understands the counter-culture. They also both feel that the way to reign in any attraction to it from their girls is to come down harder on them than usual, which does not work at all. When Dennie comes home they are overjoyed; she has been missed and she is loved, and in an effort to prevent her leaving again they approach her with gentleness and delicacy. This creates a rift between the sisters and makes Susie even more angry than she was before.
Although they take a very dim view of drugs, and of free love in the way that the media presents it, both Claire and Ed enjoy a drink or two, and their parties usually consist of free-flowing alcohol and rather lascivious behavior which the girls view as rather hypocritical. However, they are basically decent people who don't understand the way that the world is changing and want desperately to protect their daughters from it by keeping them safely locked away in the way that things were when they were growing up.
Flack
Flack is either Dennie's ex-boyfriend (her version) or her current boyfriend (his version). He represents the hippie culture that Dennie is trying to leave behind her. He is a prolific drug user and a drug addict, and he has no money or hope of getting any without stealing it. He is an expert in the dine and dash, feeding himself at diners and leaving at speed without paying the bill. His behavior is so eccentric that it is impossible to see whether he is high or not. He seems to love having Dennie around but it's unclear whether this is for herself or for her ability to get food and drugs for him. Flack steals two vehicles in his attempt to chase after Dennie and is last seen heading to Canada.
