55 pages • 1 hour read
Keeper
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Themes
Self-Sacrifice in Following Dreams
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of alcohol dependency and human and animal death.
At the start of The Keeper, Gato regards himself as an unexceptional boy who isn’t any good at sports. As he develops his skills under the Keeper’s watch, he begins to realize that there is another path available to him, but that it will come at a cost. Through Gato’s character arc, the novel explores the role of self-sacrifice in following dreams.
Central to this theme is the internal conflict that Gato undergoes due to his upbringing. Gato explains that his family “lived in a logging town. The only reason the town existed was to cut trees. My father knew for a fact that when I left school, I would work for the logging company. There was no alternative” (37). These thoughts highlight the trapped feeling that Gato has while growing up in his village: He is destined to work for the logging company, believing that there is nothing else that he can do. Due to the novel’s setting—an unnamed, remote village in South America—they are far from any cities, there is no education for children after the age of 15, and there are no other local career options.
Gato’s feeling of entrapment is exacerbated when Gato meets the Keeper and learns the magic of the forest. As Gato’s appreciation for the forest grows, he realizes that he will be forced to destroy the thing that is so important to him if he works for the logging company. Nevertheless, Gato chooses to sacrifice his soccer career and his time with the Keeper to earn money that will potentially send him to college. In this way, Gato is giving up his love of the forest, committing himself to working in a job he despises, and even risking his life—all for the potential to leave his village and help his family.
Once Gato has worked at the logging company for three weeks, he again faces an internal conflict when given the chance to pursue a soccer career. Although Gato is excited about the opportunity to play for DSJ, he also has fears about giving up his family and his time with the Keeper. He tells the Keeper, “I am afraid. I am afraid of not coming here. I don’t know what I will do without you” (147). Gato is forced to sacrifice the comfort of the forest and his time with the Keeper in exchange for traveling to San Juan and pursuing his dreams of being a professional soccer player. Once there, he also emphasizes to Faustino how “homesick” (158) he is, repeatedly returning to the swathe of land in the center of the city that is a small reminder of the forest he left behind.
Ultimately, Gato’s character arc throughout the novel epitomizes the idea of pursuing dreams. He lives a limited life with few possibilities, unlocks a new career path through his hard work and dedication, then is forced to sacrifice his old life for the possibility of achieving his goals. His willingness to embrace self-sacrifice ensures his success.
The Importance of Nature
As a work of magical realism, Keeper uses fantastical elements to highlight the importance of the natural world. The Keeper himself is a metaphorical representation of the idea of nature. He is trapped in the forest after his tragic death but is able to utilize the connection this gives him with the forest to connect with animals, manipulate the space, and even control the weather. In this way, the Keeper is representative of nature as a whole, giving it a physical embodiment which, in turn, emphasizes the importance of nature to humanity.
The relationship between Gato and the Keeper is central to conveying this idea. The Keeper dedicates his time to training Gato to become the best goalkeeper in the world, creating a magical field within the forest for them to practice on. He is dedicated to training Gato each day and supports him throughout his childhood, ultimately giving Gato purpose and direction in life. The Keeper utilizes several animals that symbolically represent the things that humanity can learn from nature. Through the use of a hawk, the Keeper allows Gato to see firsthand the way that a hawk spots, tracks, then captures its prey. With the jaguar, Gato learns how animals use the wind, their position, their agility, and grace to hunt. With the spider and its web, the Keeper helps Gato understand the importance of Gato understanding his “home”—the net—so that he can lull people into a sense of safety before trapping them into doing exactly what he wants. Each of these animals and, by extension, nature as a whole, are vital to Gato’s growth and development on the soccer field. In this way, they emphasize the power and value that nature has.
Gato’s father and Uncle Feliciano also illustrate this theme, serving as foils to each other in their attitudes toward nature. While Gato’s father works at the logging company and takes pride in his ability to control and destroy the forest, Uncle Feliciano has a respect and appreciation for nature that is completely absent in Gato’s father. Uncle Feliciano explains to Gato that his father “is fighting a losing battle, and he thinks he can win it. Does he think that when he and his friends have cut down the whole forest there will be a beautiful world for him to live in? A world of red dust to be happy in?” (22). He then emphasizes to Gato to “trust the forest,” as he is “not exploring it. It is exploring [him]” (22-23). Ultimately, Gato’s father’s lack of respect for nature leads to his death, as he is killed by a tree the loggers arrogantly cut down in a rainstorm. His death emphasizes the power of nature while highlighting the absurdity of trying to control it.
The journey that Gato takes throughout the novel shows just how much nature means to humanity. While the villagers disrespect nature by trying to control it, Gato embraces it through the Keeper and achieves his dream of playing soccer, achieving fame, and escaping from his village. At the end of the novel, Gato retires so that he can devote the rest of his life to conserving the forest, caring for nature the way it once cared for him.
The Power of Sports
Sports, and in particular soccer, play a key role in Gato’s life as well as the lives of the other villagers. Soccer is both a popular local pastime and the key to Gato’s self-discovery and self-development. The Keeper thus explores the importance that sports can have for both communities and individuals, revealing the power of sports.
The village children use soccer in the square as a form of entertainment and bonding. Gato notes how they “had games that started as soon as [they] were let out of school and didn’t end until [their] fathers came back in the trucks and darkness was falling. [They] were all soccer crazy” (3). However, due to Gato’s awkwardness and his lack of athletic ability, he is excluded from the games more and more until he gives up playing altogether. In this way, soccer serves not only as a way for children to bond but also as a form of exclusion and isolation for Gato. Gato explains that “it was not just us kids who were obsessed with soccer. The whole place was. The café had TV, and everyone squeezed in there to watch the big matches. The walls were covered with posters and photos” (3).
The idea of sports’ communal importance is further emphasized at two other points in the novel: When Gato realizes that even the loggers play soccer after work, and when the entire village gathers to watch Gato’s World Cup matches, with Hellman even giving his workers a day off. In these instances, sports serve as a source of entertainment, bonding, and camaraderie even for the adults in Gato’s small village, conveying the power that athletics have to improve their lives and provide a source of joy.
Soccer is also a key component of Gato’s growth and development throughout the novel. Once he starts playing each day with the Keeper, Gato grows stronger and more athletic. He learns how to read and understand people, as emphasized by his understanding and manipulation of Faustino during their interview when he convinces him to write a book. Thanks to sports, Gato finds a way out of the village and receives a reprieve from his internal conflict over destroying the nature he loves through logging work.
As Gato explains when he picks up the World Cup in the final lines of the novel, it is “a worthless, priceless, and magical chunk of metal” (224). The World Cup symbolizes sports and their importance to the world. On one level, the Cup is just a piece of metal, just as soccer is only a game. However, throughout Gato’s life, it is clear that both things are much more than they appear. Soccer and the World Cup are a source of pride, bonding, and, for Gato and the Keeper, personal freedom.
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