Anton

Villagers call Makar's twenty-year-old son, Anton, "Quail," "because he was like that bird in his habit of speaking only to himself and never answering other voices." The villagers shun him as much as they do his father.

A Blacksmith

The boy lives with a well-respected blacksmith and his family, who treat him relatively well. The boy admits, "the blacksmith liked to slap my face when he was tipsy and I got in his way, but there were no other consequences." One day, partisans come to the house and beat the blacksmith and his family unmercifully, then turn the boy over to German soldiers.

A Boy

The narrator and central character is a six-yearold Jewish boy at the beginning of the novel. He chronicles his life for the next six years as he struggles to survive on his own during the harrowing years of World War II. When he...