Character Analysis
Veasey is a guy you don't want on your group study project. Or really anything that requires brains and work. He's just not willing to work very hard at life, and he makes a lot of dumb decisions…probably because he's not willing to work hard at thinking, either. He's also got very little self-control. What a winner.
We first meet him trying to drown a woman so that it won't get out that he got her pregnant. Why can't he just marry her? Yep, he's engaged to someone else. Did we mention you probably don't want to date him, either?
Turns out, he's a preacher. Last we checked, murder and cheating on your fiancée were both on the no-no list in Christianity, but that doesn't seem to have slowed Veasey down. Inman stops him from killing the woman and sees to it that his congregation knows what happened so Veasey can't try it again.
They meet later on, and Veasey is actually grateful, since Inman did stop him from committing a murder. Inman doesn't really want him on the team, recognizing all too well that Veasey is going to make bad decisions that may get them both into trouble. But Veasey won't leave, so they hang out together for a while.
As you can imagine, he's not the most helpful companion to Inman, and eventually they do both get in trouble. When they're betrayed by someone they help along the way and turned over to the Home Guard, they're both at the receiving end of a shotgun when the Guard kills a bunch of prisoners. Inman makes it away, but Veasey doesn't.
Veasey seems to have learned a little bit along the way, if not very much. He occasionally helps people, and he makes one final appeal to the Home Guard's better feeling. It's possible to imagine he's finally thinking of others as well as himself.