Pollyanna features some credible and compelling characters as well as some characters who serve primarily as stereotypes. Although Pollyanna is the main character, Aunt Polly and John Pendleton are also significant and perhaps more engaging, since they experience a dramatic transformation of character.

Pollyanna's optimism dominates her personality, even though she has endured poverty, deprivation, initial rejection by Aunt Polly, and a tragic automobile accident that threatens to make her an invalid for life. Because Pollyanna is a naive eleven-year-old, she sometimes seems tactless in her conduct of the Glad Game, such as when she tells Old Tom the gardener, who is bent over with arthritis, that he should be glad he is so close to the ground and does not have to stoop down so far to do his weeding. The innocent literalism of her remark to the gardener is a fundamental trait...