The Day of the Triffids

Josella is a sighted woman who missed the comet because she was hungover and awakes to find everyone in her large household blind. While attempting to find help, she is abducted by an abusive blind man and then rescued by Bill. 

Josella is Bill’s foil regarding ethics and morality. Unlike Bill at the beginning of the novel, Josella believes it is the duty of the sighted to help the blind however they can. She convinces Bill they must do everything in their power—including participating in mandatory procreation practices—to rebuild society. When she is captured by a different, more extremist group, she is more worried about her ability to help the blind members of the group than her own imprisonment.

Josella considers herself an independent, self-made woman. Tired of living off her father’s wealth, she wrote an infamous book about the concept of female empowerment and sex. While she gains financial freedom, it comes with ridicule. Despite the judgment, Josella retains her radical thoughts, showcased most prominently when she agrees with the mandatory procreation broached by a survivalist group. 

This makes it even more ironic that, for most of the novel, Josella is relegated to the damsel in distress stereotype, waiting for Bill’s rescue and protection. Her independence is sidelined when the novel ends with her as Bill’s wife and the mother of their children.

Coker is an opportunistic, sighted man of many talents. Most notably, he can adapt his speech patterns so he can make deals as easily with upper society as he can with the lower classes. 

Backed by a group of blind people, Coker attempts to forcibly coerce a group of survivors to bend to his will. When they refuse, he fakes an emergency at their refuge and enslaves the fleeing, including Bill and Josella. He chains the sighted to groups of blind people to pressure them into helping. 

When these groups begin dying from a mysterious illness, Coker realizes his plan was optimistic but shortsighted. Remorseful, he joins Bill on the search for Josella. Along the way, they meet several survivor groups. Coker attempts to inspire survivors at Tynsham manor to make a life for themselves, but his views are ignored as the group prefers to passively wait for help. 

Coker sets off on his own later, with a smaller group of survivors, as Bill continues looking for Josella. As the years pass, Coker helps the blind stay alive and later to the Isle of Wight to join up with former adversary Michael Beadley. It is Coker who helps arrange for Bill and Josella to join the island survivors at the end of the narrative.

Beadley is the de-facto leader of a group of survivors at University Building that includes both the blind and the sighted. 

Holed up on campus, his group plans to move to safer, more sustainable quarters and implement mandatory procreation to ensure the survival of humanity. 

His group is broken up by Coker’s attack, but Beadley later resurfaces as leader of a much larger group on the Isle of Wight. His group eradicates the island’s population of triffids, creating a sanctuary, and they routinely travel back to mainland England to extend an invitation to other survivor groups. In the end, he sends for Bill in the hopes that Bill’s triffid research can help them determine a way to eliminate the pest for good.

Miss Durrant is a sighted woman in control of the Tynsham survivor group. She has a strict religious agenda and a no-nonsense attitude. Originally part of the University Building group, she challenges Dr. Vorless’s “evil” plan of mandatory procreation. During Coker’s ambush, she flees University Building and resurfaces at Tynsham, a self-sustained manor in the country. 

Miss Durrant will not allow immorality or licentiousness, which causes several members of Beadley’s group to break off from hers. She refuses to help anyone she deems as immoral, and her stubbornness causes her group to eventually succumb to disease and triffids. Though others flee, she stays behind to help the sick and, presumably, dies.

Dr. Vorless is a member of the University Building council who proposes that old mores and beliefs must be abandoned for the greater good. He champions mandatory procreation as an act of human survival and is undaunted by religious or social views that critique this concept.

Shirning Farm is a farmhouse in Sussex Downs that, early in the novel, Josella suggests she and Bill travel to and make their home. Currently living there are Dennis and Mary Brent, the married couple who owns Shirning, and Joyce Taylor. 

All three residents were blinded by the comet. Mary is pregnant and Joyce is dangerously ill from a triffid sting. Dennis manages to gather supplies for the trio before Josella’s—and later Bill’s—arrival.