More Than Human includes both fully developed and psychologically complex characters and caricatures or stereotypes.

The novel's three-part structure prevents any one character—except Homo Gestalt itself—from being central to the whole work, but one character tends to dominate each section. Lone, although an idiot, is the telepath and brain around which the immature Homo Gestalt begins to form in the first section, "The Fabulous Idiot." Lone is indeed idiotic, stupid, inarticulate, and crude, but he represents, perhaps, the childlike state of Homo Gestalt, intellectually and spiritually limited, but innocent and capable of the first halting steps toward self-knowledge and moral awareness. It is Lone who, in his very inarticulateness, best articulates the novel's theme of loneliness and the need for community. Gerry is the narrator and protagonist of the second part, "Baby is Three," and he is closely paralleled by Hip, protagonist of the...