The Heiress
"Nautilus Island's hermit heiress" desires nothing but privacy and purchases land to ensure it. Despite her wealth, she does not live luxuriously. The poem describes her through her relationships with the few others in her life.
The Summer Millionaire
Lowell says that this character has been lost. The reader is left to figure out whether he is a seasonal resident, which would line up with the title "summer millionaire," or if he has died, as the line about his yawl being auctioned off implies. The speaker offers a straight-faced jab at his way of dressing.
The Decorator
Of the three aforementioned characters, the decorator is the only one whose isolation does not seem self-imposed. He stays in his shop, rearranging the colors for the changing seasons. The speaker tells us there is no money in his work, and he would rather be able to have a family, but he still appears to tend to his shop with attention to detail.
The Speaker
The first-person speaker only becomes apparent in the fifth stanza. Before that, this character is implied through the first-person plural. The speaker always seems to be an observer. In one scene, he—or she—watches others in their cars, wallowing in his own isolation, thinking about how much he hates himself. In another, he watches a mother skunk with her babies root through his garbage, defying any attempt he makes to scare her away.
The Mother Skunk
The speaker mentions skunks generally searching the city for food like an army, but this one in his backyard strikes him with her corporeality, her entire lack of shame. She is half comical, her head stuck in a tub of sour cream, and half terrifying, because she is outside the reach of the speaker's influence. The poem ends by describing her fearlessness, framing it as something that the speaker may be moving toward, or something he wants to move toward.
