Veronika Decides to Die characters

Appears from the start

A twenty-four-year-old woman in Ljubljana whose life appears orderly and secure but feels exhausted of possibility. Convinced that every future year will merely repeat what she already knows, she takes an overdose in her rented room and waits to die. She is intelligent, self-contained, and more concerned with controlling her end than with explaining her despair to anyone else.

First appears in chapter 3

The psychiatrist in charge of Villete, the private mental hospital where Veronika wakes after her suicide attempt. He studies the emotional bitterness he calls Vitriol and is interested in whether an awareness of death can alter the way a person chooses to live.

First appears in chapter 5

A patient at Villete being treated for depression. Warm, candid, and more experienced with the institution than Veronika, she explains its routines and the informal society created by patients who no longer have to meet the outside world's standard of normality.

First appears in chapter 9

A young man diagnosed with schizophrenia who spends long periods silent and withdrawn at Villete. He appears unreachable, yet listens intently when Veronika plays the hospital piano, becoming the first audience before whom she allows a neglected part of herself to emerge.

First appears in chapter 11

A former lawyer who entered Villete after panic attacks overturned her successful professional life. She is influential among the long-term patients and initially regards Veronika's disruption of their protected routines with impatience.

First appears in chapter 4

Veronika's mother, who believed she had given her daughter stability and every reasonable opportunity. She comes to Villete after the suicide attempt carrying grief, confusion, and the painful knowledge that parental love did not reveal how empty Veronika felt.

First appears in chapter 22

Eduard's father, a Yugoslav diplomat whose career depends on discipline and respectable appearances. He expects his son to pursue a similarly approved path and interprets Eduard's artistic ambitions and psychological collapse through the demands of family status.

First appears in chapter 22

Eduard's mother, who tries to protect her son while remaining constrained by her husband's expectations and by fear of scandal. Her concern cannot bridge the widening distance between Eduard's inner life and the future his parents planned for him.