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Amory Blaine

Auburn-haired only child of Beatrice and Stephen Blaine, raised in hotels and private train cars before attending St. Regis' prep school and Princeton. He edits school papers, courts Isabelle, Rosalind, Eleanor, and Clara in turn, gets beaten up in a drunken New York bender, and drifts through convalescence, poverty, and disillusionment after the war changes his fortunes and outlook.

Beatrice O'Hara Blaine

Amory's mother, a fabulously wealthy, cultured woman educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Rome, fluent in the gossip of old Roman families and personally known to figures like Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita. She married Stephen Blaine out of weariness rather than love, cultivated a fashionable bout of consumption as part of her personal atmosphere, and personally supervised Amory's eccentric early education while touring resorts like Coronado and Mexico City.

Stephen Blaine

Amory's father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man who grew wealthy at thirty after the deaths of his two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers. He has a taste for Byron and the Encyclopedia Britannica, wavers at crucial moments, and spends most of the story in the background, later losing money on mining stock speculation that reduces Amory's allowance.

Monsignor Darcy

A worldly Catholic clergyman who treats Amory as an intellectual equal from boyhood, serving as his confessor, mentor, and confidant. He describes himself as an escape valve for a friend's agnosticism, encourages Amory through his post-war malaise at Princeton, and argues that Amory has lost vanity rather than substance during his listless year.

Thornton Hancock

An elder statesman-scholar who has personally conversed with Parnell, Gladstone, and Bismarck across two continents. He meets young Amory at a memorable luncheon with Monsignor and remarks admiringly that the boy's education 'ought not to be intrusted to a school or college.'

Kerry Holiday

Amory's witty, humorous-eyed housemate at Princeton, a year older than his twin-seeming brother Burne, who acts as mentor and satirical censor of the household. In April of his college years he abruptly leaves Princeton to sail for France and enroll in the Lafayette Esquadrille.

Burne Holiday

Kerry's fair-haired, intensely serious brother, who competes fiercely for a place on the Princetonian board (delayed by a bout of diphtheria) and later becomes a campus radical, publicly resigning from his eating club and persuading roughly a quarter of the junior class to consider doing the same.

Alec Connage

A quiet, aloof Hotchkiss-educated 'slicker' who rooms next to Amory at Princeton and later shares a New York apartment with him and Tom. He is Rosalind and Cecelia's brother, drives borrowed cars to the shore on impulse, and is later caught by Amory in a compromising hotel situation that Amory covers for at personal risk.

Isabelle Borge

A popular, self-dramatizing debutante and Sally's cousin whom Amory courts as a sophomore; their romance, carried on through letters and dances at the Minnehaha Club, ends in a quarrel over his lack of sympathy and his ill-timed laughter.

Rosalind Connage

Alec and Cecelia's beautiful, spoiled, self-aware sister, freshly out as a debutante, who falls into an intense romance with Amory built on mutual attraction and blunt talk about love and experience. She ultimately refuses to marry him, choosing financial security and refusing to 'fail' by tying herself to his uncertain prospects.

Dawson Ryder

A handsome, wealthy, steady twenty-six-year-old suitor of Rosalind's, described as faithful and perhaps a bit boring but sure of success; he represents the secure marital alternative Rosalind ultimately chooses over Amory.

Cecelia Connage

Rosalind and Alec's sister, who comments wryly on her sister's habit of abusing and discarding suitors who keep coming back for more, and observes the household's social maneuvering with detached amusement.

Mrs. Connage

Rosalind, Alec, and Cecelia's socially conscious mother, mildly disapproving of her son's shared bachelor apartment and focused on making sure her daughter Rosalind gets full attention during her debut week.

Clara

A widowed young mother and captivating storyteller with two children, whom Amory visits for tea and 'maple-sugar lunches.' She tells him plainly that she will never remarry, least of all a clever man like him, though she cares for him deeply.

Eleanor Savage

A striking, poetry-quoting young woman Amory meets singing Verlaine to herself in a haystack during a Maryland storm; their intense late-summer romance in Ramilly County ends with a cold moonlit horseback ride and permanent farewell.

Myra St. Claire

A Minneapolis girl who hosts a bobbing party where Amory experiences his first kiss with her by a fire, only to feel an immediate revulsion and desire to escape afterward.

Tom D'Invilliers

Amory's bookish Princeton roommate and later New York apartment-mate, an aspiring poet who writes free-verse satires of contemporary American poets ('Boston Bards and Hearst Reviewers') and shares Amory's postwar drift into ambitionless city life.

Jesse Ferrenby

Editor of the Princetonian who writes a controversial editorial on the college coaching system, leading to a comic misunderstanding with Burne Holiday, who mistakes a Biblical quotation in it for dangerous irreligious rhetoric.

Dick Humbird

One of the group of Princeton friends (along with Kerry Holiday, Jesse Ferrenby, and others) who joins Amory and Alec on an impulsive borrowed-car trip to the Jersey shore.

Princeton University

The novel's central setting for Amory's college years, featuring dormitories like Campbell Hall and 12 Univee, eating clubs such as Cap and Gown, the student newspaper the Princetonian, and campus landmarks like McCosh walk and Nassau Street. It is the site of Amory's early social triumphs, Burne Holiday's anti-club radical movement, and long philosophical conversations among students.

St. Regis' School

Amory's boarding school, where his mother's eccentric influence is 'painfully drilled' out of him and replaced with more conventional habits, and where he rises to become a star quarterback, actor, and editor of the St. Regis Tattler.

Minnehaha Club

A Minneapolis social club with a grand curved staircase, site of the dance where Amory and Isabelle first meet in person after a buildup of rumor and anticipation from her cousin Sally.

The Lake Geneva Estate

Beatrice O'Hara's father's sprawling sixty-acre Wisconsin estate, dotted with summer houses, fountains, white benches, and a growing colony of white cats, where young Amory spent formative time and where Beatrice later corners him for a moonlit talk.

Deal Beach / Asbury Park

A Jersey shore destination reached by a borrowed car full of Princeton friends (Alec, Kerry, Jesse Ferrenby, and others), the site of penniless boardwalk wandering, a French War Orphans collection turned into brandy money, and a rowdy moving-picture excursion.

Atlantic City

A boardwalk resort town where Amory, brooding on the sea's memory of Norse galleys and British dreadnoughts, runs into Alec and his companions in a low racing car, leading to a fraught night involving a hotel room raid by private detectives.

Ramilly County, Maryland

A rural Southern county where Amory, out riding in a thunderstorm, hears Eleanor Savage singing Verlaine from a haystack, beginning their brief passionate romance that ends atop Harper's Hill under a cold moon.

Lafayette Esquadrille

The volunteer American aviation unit flying for France that Kerry Holiday leaves Princeton in April to join, representing the pull of the European war on college-age Americans before U.S. entry into the conflict.

Princeton Eating Clubs

Exclusive upperclass social clubs (including Cap and Gown) that dominate Princeton social life; Burne Holiday's public resignation from his club and campaign against the system causes campus-wide argument and convinces roughly a quarter of the junior class to consider resigning as well.

The Registrar's Office Envelope

A dreaded blue-or-pink envelope containing exam or eligibility results that Amory anxiously awaits at Princeton, its color determining whether he remains eligible for the Princetonian chairmanship he has been working toward.

The Philosophy of the Slicker

Amory's private theory, developed at St. Regis' and refined at Princeton, about the social types who succeed at school and college through practiced nonchalance, athletic prowess, and calculated charm rather than genuine substance—embodied by figures like Alec Connage.

Outbreak of the European War

The war begins the summer after Amory's freshman year at Princeton; he initially treats it as a distant sporting spectacle rather than a matter of real concern, a detached reaction typical of his early self-absorption before the war later reshapes his and his friends' lives and fortunes.

Prohibition and Postwar New York

After the war, Prohibition closes down the great rendezvous bars like the Biltmore, and Amory and Tom D'Invilliers settle into an ambitionless, reduced life in a shared New York apartment, dining occasionally at the Ritz or Princeton Club and outgrowing their old taste for dancing at spots like the Club de Vingt.