55 pages • 1 hour read
Keeper
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Character Analysis
El Gato
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of alcohol dependency and death.
El Gato, “The Cat,” is the primary protagonist and central point of view character in the novel. Although the novel is told in a third-person point of view, much of it is told as a flashback recounting Gato’s life, making him the primary narrator.
Gato is considered the world’s best soccer goalkeeper, as his team just won the World Cup. He is from an unnamed village in an unspecified country in South America. Little is known about his physical characteristics other than his tall stature and big hands. Throughout the interview, he is largely calm and collected, ignoring Faustino’s redirects, disbelief, and pressure so that he can tell the story that he wants to be told.
El Gato is a dedicated, hardworking character who has a strong understanding of his position in life throughout his childhood. When he tries to play soccer as a child, he is awkward and unathletic and is therefore mistreated by his classmates and excluded from the games. As a result, he begins wandering into the forest, where he ends up meeting the Keeper. From there, Gato returns to the forest every single day for two years, dedicating his time to learning how to play soccer successfully. However, this does not stop him from giving up soccer for the betterment of his family, as he goes to work with his father for the logging company so that his parents can afford to send him to college.
In this way, Gato experiences an internal conflict throughout the text, largely representative of the idea of destiny versus reality. While the Keeper emphasizes the idea that Gato’s destiny is to become a goalkeeper, the reality of his situation forces him to work in a place he describes as “hellish.” To make the situation worse, Gato is responsible for helping to destroy the forest, thereby endangering the Keeper and the part of his life that is most important to him.
Gato’s journey throughout the novel emphasizes The Power of Sports, as his ability to play soccer transforms who he is as a person. Gato becomes bigger, stronger, and more athletic. He becomes an important figure to both his village and his country, as his soccer skills and victory in the World Cup earn him respect and appreciation. His soccer skill gives him an escape from his village, resolving his internal conflict by allowing him to change his destiny and escape working for the logging company.
Additionally, as reflected through his conversations with Faustino, soccer also gives Gato the ability to read people. He enters the interview under the guise of giving Faustino an interview about the World Cup, but ultimately uses Faustino to get his story about the Keeper published as a book. He reads Faustino’s body language and understands his psyche—something he learned from the Keeper to do on the soccer field—then manipulates Faustino into agreeing with him.
His return to the forest after winning the World Cup and his subsequent retirement from soccer to work on saving the forest emphasize his understanding of The Importance of Nature. As the Keeper—and by extension, nature—have given Gato fame, fortune, and an escape from the village, he returns the favor by dedicating his life to it.
As a protagonist, Gato is a dynamic character who changes throughout the course of the text. Throughout his childhood, he is initially nicknamed “The Stork” due to his long limbs and lack of athleticism. However, after he is empowered through soccer, he is given the nickname “The Cat.” This nickname reflects his reflexes, instincts, and newfound prowess on the field. Gato initially lacks direction in his life, convinced that he is going to follow in his father’s footsteps and work for the logging company. With the help of the Keeper, Gato gains a purpose in life, giving him motivation to be successful as a professional soccer player. In this way, Gato exemplifies both the themes of nature and sports: The combination of these two ideas is central to Gato’s growth and development in the novel.
The Keeper
The Keeper is a mysterious, ghostly figure that Gato finds one day on a soccer field in the middle of the forest. Gato describes his clothing as an old soccer “uniform,” with “a high-necked knitted sweater. Green, like the forest. And long shorts made of heavy-looking cotton” (17-18). When the Keeper moves, it is like “how sometimes you get bad TV reception, and there is a kind of shadow that follows the picture, so that things seem to happen twice” (17), with a voice that spoke “words [that] seemed to take a long time to reach” Gato (19). At the end of the novel, the reason for these characteristics is revealed: The Keeper is a goalkeeper from the 1940s whose plane crashed on the way to the World Cup match. As a result, the Keeper and the rest of the team were never found, leaving the Keeper lost in the forest until his country wins the World Cup they missed out on.
The Keeper is a metaphorical representation of nature. As a work of magical realism, the Keeper is the magical element that serves to emphasize The Importance of Nature. As a physical being, the Keeper plays an important role in Gato’s life, training him and making him into a successful goalie. However, he also uses his supernatural power to help Gato, showing him how a hawk tracks its prey, how a jaguar takes down a deer, and using nature to brew a storm that allows Gato to practice with loud sounds and distractions. In this way, nature itself plays a key role in making Gato into the successful goalie that he becomes. As the natural world is important to Gato on a personal level, it emphasizes the value that nature holds to humanity on a larger scale.
Paul Faustino
Paul Faustino is a famous sports journalist. The novel is set up as a conversation between Faustino and Gato, with Faustino interviewing him after his World Cup victory. Despite being one of the two central characters, Faustino is a relatively flat character with little known about him beyond what the reader gleans from his conversation with Gato.
Faustino has a true passion for soccer, repeatedly redirecting Gato’s story to talk about his experiences at DSJ, his soccer career, and the World Cup match. He is awed by Gato’s soccer skills and respectful of what his accomplishments have meant to Gato, his village, and his entire country. Faustino’s journalism career and his future interviews are explored in Keeper’s two sequels: The Penalty (2006) and Exposure (2008).
Faustino serves as a stand-in for the reader during Gato’s story and a way to anchor his interview. As Gato introduces the magical element of the Keeper, the reader is given insight into Faustino’s thoughts as he questions the veracity of Gato’s story. He is intrigued and entertained by Gato’s recounting of his childhood, even if he does not fully believe in the existence of the Keeper. Ultimately, Gato’s decision to leave at the novel’s conclusion without telling Faustino what he saw in the photograph leaves Faustino in the dark as to what Gato has discovered about the Keeper’s life. However, whether Faustino believes Gato or not is unimportant; what matters is that Gato’s career is defined by his relationship to nature and the role that growing up in the forest by his village played.
Gato’s Father
Gato’s father is unnamed in the novel. He works for the logging company, like most people who live in his village. His primary job is to cut down trees to make more livable space and prevent the forest from overtaking the village. Gato notes how his father even walks “around the walls of [their] house with a machete, chopping off the jungle’s fingers to keep it safe in its leafless space” (10). In this way, Gato’s father stands in opposition to the Keeper, who represents the importance of nature, as he spends his life trying to control and destroy the forest.
Despite this negative attribute, Gato’s father still plays an important and supportive role in Gato’s life. First, he gets Gato a job at the logging company so that he can save money to send Gato to college. He also chooses a job that is safe for Gato, securing him work as a mechanic. Then, when Gato wants to go to the soccer academy, Gato’s father’s actions emphasize the theme of Self-Sacrifice in Following Dreams, as he struggles to give up his relationship with his son to allow him to pursue a soccer career. Despite being a flat character, Gato’s father is important in his supporting, caring nature toward Gato—even if he is not always open about his feelings.
Uncle Feliciano
Uncle Feliciano is the brother of Gato’s grandmother, Nana. He is portrayed as old and wise, as he gives Gato advice at several points in the novel. He is a flat character, with little known about him in the text.
Feliciano’s primary role is to serve as a foil to Gato’s father, thereby emphasizing Feliciano’s understanding of the world and the importance of nature. Unlike most of the villagers, Feliciano expresses his appreciation for the forest. He explains the futility of trying to control nature to Gato, thereby emphasizing its importance and helping Gato to understand a different perspective than the one he is taught by his father.
Additionally, when Gato’s father is hesitant about sending Gato to DSJ, it is Feliciano who convinces him that Gato is ready and deserves the chance to get out of the village and build a life for himself.
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