The Last Word

Characters

• the defendant — narrator and accused man: With cold conviction he tells the judges why he killed his tormentor.
• Peter — the dead man's son, a preparatory-class schoolboy: Accused by his father of stealing a lump of sugar; the thought that he will inherit his father's nature torments the narrator.
• the conductor — a railway official: Summoned by the pedagogue, he chides the narrator in a fatherly way for pestering passengers.