Characters
- Rostislav (Ruska) Vadimich Doronin: A zek mechanic, 23. Loves Klara, daughter of the prosecutor Makarygin. An informer himself, albeit a reluctant one, is beaten and sent away for helping fellow inmates find out who the other informers are.
- Klara Petrovna Makarygina: Makarygin's youngest daughter, works in the vacuum laboratory and falls in love with Ruska.
- Gleb Vikentyevich Nerzhin: A zek mathematician, age 31. An autobiographical character. He is offered a position in a cryptography group, and refuses, even knowing this means he will be sent away from the sharashka.
- Nadya Ilinichna Nerzhina: Gleb's wife. Waited for eight years and became a student in Moscow because of him (Marfino is not far from Moscow) but is considering divorce because remaining married to a prisoner blocks her continuing studies or finding a job.
- Valentin Martinevich Pryanchikov: A zek engineer and head of the acoustic laboratory, "Walentulya" is not taken seriously and behaves like a child, despite the fact that he is as old as Nerzhin.
- Lev Grigoryevich Rubin: A zek philologist and teacher, 36, a Communist from youth, but nevertheless always ready for a good joke, even about socialism. Rubin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Lev Kopelev. He gets a position in a new group; his first task is to identify the man who called the American embassy.
- Dmitri Aleksandrovich Sologdin: A zek designer, 36, a survivor of the northern camps now serving his second term. Sologdin is based on Solzhenitsyn's friend Dimitrii Mikhailovich Panin, who later wrote a book entitled "The Notebooks of Sologdin". He works on a cryptographic machine in secret, but is found out and has to develop his invention so as not to get sent back.
- Innokentii Artemyevich Volodin: A Ministry official whose phone call at the beginning of the book functions as a catalyst for much of the later action in the sharashka and eventually leads to his arrest.
Read more about this topic: The First Circle
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)