Characters
The Selfish Giant
Selfishness redeemed by love
The owner of a lovely garden, who returns after seven years with the Cornish ogre, having said all he had to say. He walls the children out and is left with an endless winter, puzzled by the weather. The sight of a little boy crying under a frozen tree melts his heart; he knocks down the wall, plays with the children for years, and dies in old age when the boy returns to take him to Paradise.
The little boy
The wounded child
The smallest of the children, too tiny to climb the tree in the farthest corner, who does not run from the Giant because his eyes are full of tears. He is the only one to kiss the Giant, and then he vanishes; no one knows where he lives. Years later he returns with the prints of nails in his hands and feet, which he calls the wounds of Love, signs that identify him with Christ, and leads the Giant to Paradise.
The children
Bringers of Spring
The schoolchildren who play in the Giant's garden every afternoon and cry to each other how happy they are there. Driven out, they find the stony road a poor playground and wander round the wall remembering the garden. When they creep back through a hole, Spring returns with them. They become the Giant's daily companions for the rest of his life, and it is they who find him dead beneath the blossoming tree.
Snow, Frost, the North Wind and the Hail
Winter's unwelcome lodgers
The weather that takes over the Giant's garden once Spring has forgotten it. The Snow covers the grass with her great white cloak and the Frost paints the trees silver. The North Wind, wrapped in furs, roars all day and blows the chimney-pots down, and the Hail, dressed in grey, rattles on the castle roof till he breaks most of the slates. They are delighted to live there all the year round.