John Brown
John Brown is the only character described in the text. When the reader is introduced to him, he is in the midst of dying, or perhaps already dead. He is hung from a beam, his scarred head covered by a hood. He is mostly identified by his famously long and unruly beard. Still, even in this final moment, he is described as tortured by his failure to end slavery. Melville suggests that the intensity of his feelings would spark the flame of future battles.
Speaker
The speaker is a stand-in for Melville himself. He employs a tragic tone while keeping focus on a series of specific details about John Brown's body. While Melville does not explicitly identify himself in the text, the observations and style are consistent with the rest of the collection. The speaker reads John Brown's execution as a "portent" for the looming bloodshed of the Civil War. He is concerned with cyclical violence and the role that slavery (and the passion of abolitionists) played in igniting the conflict. He takes particular note of the way in which the hanging and slavery itself are sanctioned by law in spite of their terrible barbarity.
