Knock, Knock, Knock

Characters

• Alexandr Vassilyevitch Ridel — the narrator of the events: A nineteen-year-old student whose night-time joke of knocking on the wall sets the tragedy going.
• Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev — a young officer and fatalist: A gloomy, proud man convinced that he has a special destiny.
• Semyon — Tyeglev's servant: He roams the fog with the narrator, finds his master under the birch, and first sees the blood.
• Marya Anempodistovna (Masha) — Tyeglev's beloved: His aunt's foster-child, abandoned by him; she died in Petersburg of cholera, not of poison.
• Ilya — a pedlar selling oranges: A guitar-playing joker; it was he, Tyeglev's namesake, the girl called behind the fence, and he dropped the comb.
• Tyelepnev — an officer of the same battery: A tipsy encounter in the fog; he reports that Tyeglev announced he was about to shoot himself.
• the doctor — the physician who treated Masha: He gave in to Tyeglev's insistence and called the death a poisoning, though it was cholera.