Joe Farkas- a Brooklyn Eastern European Jew who moves from New York to Atlanta to work for Adolph Freitag’s bedding company. Unlike the other characters, he is proud of his jewish heritage and shows concern for the events going on with Jews back in Europe. He is extremely sensitive to the lack of concern and prejudice that the Freitag/Levys towards Eastern European Jews. He goes to Ballyhoo with Sunny where they get into an argument accusing her of “Jew hater talk” but by the end his regrets his hard words and they reconcile.
Sunny Freitag- twenty-year old daughter of widow Reba Freitag and Adolph’s older brother who started the family bedding company. Unlike her Lala, her cousin, she is intellectually curious and doesn’t care too much about social standing. In the play, she is home for winter break from Wellesley College where she is majoring in sociology. Although she was a victim of prejudice when she was a teenager when she was kicked out of the Venetian club pool for being Jewish, she still doesn’t believe that religion plays a huge role in the world. After meeting Joe, her previous beliefs start to shift and demonstrates a clear and real interest in exploring her religious and cultural background.
Reba Freitag- widow of Boo and Adolph’s brother. Her character is a little vague compared to the others. Readers don’t get a great sense of who she exactly is.
Lala Levy- twenty-year old daughter of Boo Levy. More socially awkward than Sunny, Lala has always been jealous of her less stereotypical Jewish cousin counterpart. She also feels a lot of pressure from Boo to get a date to Ballyhoo. By the end of the play, she ends up accepting a proposal by Peachy Weil.
Boo Levy- as someone who hold social standing above all else uses various tactics to pressure Lala into getting a Ballyhoo date and is ecstatic when someone of Peachy’s social standing takes her to Ballyhoo and ends up proposing.
Peachy Weil- comes from a high social standing Jewish family in Louisiana and seems unaware of the offenses he causes by his harsh often socially inappropriate comments.
Adolph Freitag- a bachelor who is head of the Freitag/Levy household runs the family bedding business and is one of the only few characters that show any concern of the problems regarding Jews going on over in Europe. He, however, is not completely immune to the social standing concerns of southern society as he was the past president of the restricted Standards Club.