55 pages • 1 hour read
Keeper
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Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal death.
Paul Faustino, the most well-known soccer journalist in South America, begins an interview with El Gato (“The Cat”), the best goalkeeper in the world. He has just won the World Cup with his team. El Gato tells Faustino about growing up in a small village in an unnamed South American country.
As a boy, El Gato lives with his parents, his little sister, and his grandma, Nana. He plays soccer every day with his friends, but he is never any good. The other children refer to him as La Cigüeña— “The Stork”—due to his long limbs and awkward movement on the field. At 13, he gives up playing, instead going to work with his father at a logging company that is trying to clear away the forest. He credits his father with him becoming the soccer player he is because he “learned everything” (5) in the forest.
Gato gets distracted from his story, staring at the World Cup. He tells Faustino that he used to dream about winning the World Cup and taking it home to his father. He would leave it in his arms while he slept. Faustino suggests they do it now, but Gato tells him that his father is dead.
Chapter 2 Summary
The narrative shifts back to Gato’s past. When Gato quits playing soccer, he begins to notice the nature around him. He becomes enamored with the forest, wandering through it each day. He is warned by his father and Nana about the dangers of the forest. Nana tells him about the “Waiting Dead”—ghosts who are stuck on the earth until they find the one thing in life that they never got to have.
In the present, Gato stops his story to tell Faustino that he needs to describe the “magic” of the forest accurately when he writes this story for his readers. Faustino assures him he will, then asks Gato if he ever found what he was looking for in the forest. Gato replies that “it found [him]” (15).
Chapter 3 Summary
One day during his childhood, El Gato breaks his own rule about the forest: He strays off the path without knowing why. He comes across an open field with a soccer goal at one end. He finds a man standing there, dressed in an old soccer uniform. Gato refers to him as “the Keeper.” The Keeper has an ethereal quality, looking similar to “static” on a television. His words seem to take a long time to reach Gato’s ears. He speaks to Gato, saying the words, “There. Your place. You belong there” (19), and Gato runs from the forest in fear. That night, Gato is unable to sleep, constantly dreaming about the Keeper’s words.
The next afternoon, El Gato goes to watch the other boys play soccer. Nana’s brother, Uncle Feliciano, sits and talks with him. He asks Gato about his trips into the forest. Based on Gato’s reaction, he accuses Gato of having seen something, but Gato denies it. Uncle Feliciano tells him that the most important thing he can do is “respect” the forest. He laughs at Gato’s father for thinking that he can ever clear the forest away, insisting that the forest allows the village to exist. He tells Gato to remember that he is “not exploring it. It is exploring [him]” (22).
Chapter 4 Summary
El Gato returns to the forest the next day. The Keeper appears when he gets to the clearing, and Gato steps into the goal. The Keeper shoots on him and scores, with Gato not even reacting. He asks the Keeper why he brought him there when he had already stopped playing soccer, but the Keeper simply tells him that he “stopped so that [he] could start to learn” (25).
The first day, the Keeper shoots at Gato repeatedly, scoring every time as Gato flounders in the net. The Keeper tells him to read his body before he shoots and to stop trying to save it. Gato manages to guess where the Keeper is shooting several times. The Keeper explains that Gato isn’t guessing, but instead has the “instincts” needed to read his body when he shoots.
The Keeper then goes into the goal and has El Gato shoot at him. The Keeper stops every shot. He tells Gato that the shooter is always under more pressure than the goalie, so the goalie will always have the upper hand. He tells Gato to come back the next day if he wants to continue to learn.
The next day, the Keeper makes Gato stand out in the field with him. Gato is hesitant, realizing that he is still afraid of the Keeper. The Keeper tells him to look at the goal, where Gato sees a rodent scurrying across the crossbar. The Keeper then has him look into the sky, where Gato sees a hawk. Gato then feels a “lurch” and realizes that he is seeing from the perspective of the hawk. He looks down from the sky at the clearing, then at the rodent, then dives down to the goal and grabs it off the crossbar. El Gato then feels himself go back into his own body.
The Keeper tells Gato to go into the goal. He shoots at him, and Gato manages to stop it.
In the present, Gato tells Faustino that he went back to the forest every day for two years. He insists that he learned everything about being a goalie from the Keeper.
Chapter 5 Summary
Gato gets up to go to the bathroom. Faustino thinks of how there are two possibilities for this interview: Gato is “crazy” and actually believes his story, or he is lying to ruin Faustino’s career. He thinks neither scenario is likely, given how he considers himself Gato’s friend, but he can’t think of a third possibility. He decides to listen to the rest of the interview, then decide what to do with it.
Gato resumes his childhood narrative. He continues to go to the forest every day. Some days he comes home excited, other days he feels frustrated at his inability to learn as quickly as he wants to.
His mother begins to question him about where he is going, so Gato tells her that he is exploring the forest. She becomes excited, thinking that he is interested in science, so Gato starts collecting things in the forest and coming up with stories to tell her about what he saw. She encourages him, buying him journals and pencils.
Eventually, Gato’s future starts an argument between his parents. His father is adamant that he is going to become a logger—just like everyone else in the village. However, his mother wants him to go to college. As a compromise, his father agrees to let Gato work for two years with the logging company and save money to pay for his college education. Gato feels guilty through it all, knowing that he has no interest in studying science.
Chapter 6 Summary
El Gato admits to Faustino that he often “hated” the Keeper. He tells him that the Keeper would drive him every single day—keeping goal, shooting, exercising—and never once praised him for the progress he made.
Gato continues his narrative. One day in the forest, Gato arrives to find the Keeper standing in the goal. He instructs Gato to stand by him, then asks Gato what he feels. Gato is unsure how to answer, so the Keeper makes him walk to each goalpost. He then asks Gato several questions in succession—like how far apart the posts are, how close his hands are to the top, how much space would a shooter have coming at him from the left, and more. Gato gets frustrated when he’s unable to answer. The Keeper tells him that he needs to know all these things so that he can be comfortable in the goal and truly understand it.
When Gato spots a spider catching a fly in the corner of the goal, the Keeper compares the goal to Gato’s “web,” where he will trap shooters and stop their shots.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Keeper utilizes a frame story, a literary technique wherein the overarching narrative contains another story within. Peet uses the interview between Faustino and El Gato as the framing device, enabling Gato to recount the events of his childhood years with the benefit of hindsight. As a result, much of the novel is told through flashbacks, with the narrative occasionally returning to the present as Faustino asks questions, reacts to the story, or redirects Gato to discussing a different part of his life.
This narrative technique calls into question the reliability of Gato’s narrative, with Faustino operating as a stand-in for the reader. For example, after Gato mentions the Keeper, Faustino begins to question whether he can believe Gato’s story. He thinks how there are two possibilities: “[T]he world’s greatest goalkeeper was barking, moonstruck mad” or “this jungle story was an elaborate, carefully thought-through scam [where] Faustino’s credibility—and his job—would go down the drain” (33) for publishing it. At this point in the novel, Faustino does not even consider the third possibility: That Gato is telling the truth. Faustino thus questions the veracity of Gato’s story, but ultimately also reaffirms Gato’s sanity and honesty. If Faustino believes Gato has credibility and stays to hear his story, the novel implies, then the reader should, too.
The events in the forest and Gato’s description of the Keeper introduce elements of magical realism into the novel. When Gato first finds the field, he explains that he broke his rule and left the path, admitting that he doesn’t even know why he did it. He describes the field as “short grass. Turf. Impossible. Absolutely impossible” (17). The field’s discovery is inexplicable, as is its very existence in the middle of a forest. Then, Gato describes the Keeper as, “you know how sometimes you get bad TV reception, and there is kind of shadow that follows the picture, so that things seems to happen twice? It was a bit like that: I watched him move and saw him standing still at the same time” (17). This simile, comparing the Keeper’s movement to how a television looks with poor reception, emphasizes the Keeper’s ethereal, ghost-like quality.
These elements of magical realism serve to introduce the key theme of The Importance of Nature. As Gato’s father and the logging company work desperately to destroy the forest and thereby control it, one of the key components of that forest becomes an important part of Gato’s life. In this way, the Keeper is a symbolic representation of nature itself. He serves as a guide to Gato, motivating him and giving his life meaning for the first time, serving as a physical embodiment of the importance of nature to humanity.
One character who emphasizes the importance of nature is Uncle Feliciano, Nana’s brother. He is a flat character, with the text providing little information about him. However, he serves an important role as a foil to Gato’s father. While Gato’s father is like most men in the village—working for the logging company and fixated on clearing out nature—Uncle Feliciano has respect and appreciation for the forest. When Gato is afraid to return to the forest and refuses to discuss what he saw with anyone, Uncle Feliciano intuits that Gato had an experience with the magic of the forest. He stresses to Gato that “this plaza, this metal church, the game here, all this is here only because the forest allows it,” and that Gato needs to “trust the forest […] Respect it [as] it is exploring [him],” and not the other way around (22). In this way, Uncle Feliciano helps to introduce the pivotal role that nature plays in everyone’s life, encouraging Gato to return to the forest and the magic he found there.
Another part of Gato’s newfound sense of belonging revolves around soccer, introducing the theme of The Power of Sports. Soccer is already an important component of life in the village, as the children play each day as their primary form of entertainment. However, Gato’s thin stature and his lack of athleticism lead to his exclusion from the game. Through his training with the Keeper, Gato feels a sense of belonging and purpose for the first time in his life. He notes how, when he says the words, “I am a keeper” for the first time, he is “filled with relief, the kind of relief you feel when you give in to some irresistible force. When you know that there are no other choices to make” (46).
Until now, Gato had believed that he was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps, just as all the other boys in his village did. Due to the novel’s setting, an unnamed village in the middle of the forest in South America, the villagers have access to only rudimentary education, are isolated from any major cities, and serve to fulfill only one goal: The destruction of the forest. Although a career in soccer is not yet even considered by Gato, his dedication to the Keeper builds his strength and stamina, gives him joy, and creates a sense of belonging—emphasizing the role that sports play in personal empowerment.
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