The Keeper of Stars

Ellie is the novel’s deuteragonist and the other of its two romantic leads. Ellie is an ambitious, clever, and amusing young woman determined to become a university astronomy professor. She is willing to work very hard to move ahead in this male-dominated field, and she spends most of her free time reading and studying. When she first arrives in Sims Chapel, she is enraptured by its natural beauty and is open and adventurous enough to throw herself into fishing, boating, and other activities common in the area, despite having lived all of her life in wealthier, more urban environments that she has been taught to view as superior.

Clara tells Ellie that she is the strongest of the women in their family, and other characters endorse this view of Ellie. Strength, however, is not the same thing as courage. Ellie allows her relationship with Clara to fade away because she is too nervous to return to Sims Chapel, fearing that she might run into Jack. For years, she cannot face Jack because of her guilty feelings, and even once she realizes that they might have another chance at love, she postpones contacting him because she is anxious about how to approach him. These choices end up hurting Clara and Jack, two of the people Ellie loves the most. Over and over, characters tell Ellie that she is too driven and too focused on her career ambitions and that she needs to make her emotional life a higher priority. The main way that Ellie changes over the years is that she does, eventually, embrace the idea that love is more important than her career. This change in Ellie is an important part of the novel’s consideration of The Impact of Individual Ambitions on Romantic Partnerships.

George is the elderly man who runs the ferry service that Jack works for in his youth. In 1950, George is 75 years old and drinks heavily. George is a flat and static character who chiefly exists as a plot device—he is a mentor figure and is there to give Jack a job on the water so that Jack can meet Ellie, and he then offers advice about Jack’s career ambitions and romantic feelings toward Ellie. George largely disappears from the narrative after this; at some point several years before 1962, he dies. Afterward, Jack visits his grave when he needs to think things through, making George a sounding board for Jack’s thoughts about Ellie, even in death.

The story does offer some basic information about George: He loves the water and boating, for instance, and he is generous toward Jack, offering him leftover paint for his mother’s kitchen and sharing his beer, food, and fishing worms with the younger man. Although he is cynical in some ways—he does not believe that people from humble backgrounds like his and Jack’s have access to the same opportunities wealthier people have, for instance—he can also be gullible, as when he falls for Jack’s repeated stalled-engine trick. George is a kind man who takes his role as a mentor in Jack’s life seriously, taking the time to listen to Jack’s problems and offer advice and even making Jack his heir, making it possible for Jack to build the charter boat business he has dreamed of for years.

Jack’s mother, Helen, is Jack’s other primary role model. She is a practical, hardworking widow who has succeeded in keeping a roof over her son’s head in difficult circumstances. She has lost her husband and a young son, events that made this deeply religious woman angry enough at God to stop attending church. Helen does, however, still insist on saying grace before meals, indicating that she remains a believer. Although the home she provides for Jack is a humble one, she makes sure that it is well-kept and that Jack is fed, and she does not accept financial help from Jack. She lets Jack provide fish for dinner if he can catch it and paint the kitchen when the paint is free—but she wants him to save his money to pursue his own dreams. This characterizes Helen as both a loving mother and an independent person who takes pride in meeting her responsibilities herself. She encourages Jack’s ambitions and listens attentively to his thoughts about Ellie; although she likes Ellie a great deal, her primary concern is her own son, so she warns him not to fall in love with Ellie, sensing that it will lead to permanent heartbreak.

Helen is another flat and static character who moves offstage once her purpose in the narrative is served. She is an important character and plot device early in the story, clarifying how Jack came to be the humble and hardworking young man he is in 1950 and giving Jack a clear reason for wanting to remain in Sims Chapel instead of moving to be with Ellie. Her positive reaction to Ellie also characterizes her, and her relationship with Jack, juxtaposed against Ellie’s relationship with Marie, highlights how similar parenting behaviors—encouraging ambition or discouraging problematic relationships—can be received differently depending on the quality of the parent-child bond. Helen does not appear in Part 2 of the novel, and she is only mentioned in passing in Part 3. In Part 4, she makes a brief appearance to say how happy she is about Ellie and Jack’s wedding, and this is the last time she is mentioned.

Clara is Marie’s sister and Ellie’s aunt. She was born and raised in a small Tennessee town and has made her adult life in Sims Chapel, where she lived with her now-deceased husband, Bill. When Marie wants to send Ellie somewhere for the summer of 1950, Clara demonstrates her love for family by agreeing to host her niece in her stately house on the hill in Sims Chapel. The two women grow very close over the summer and discover that they have several things in common. Ellie’s relationship with Jack—at least during that summer—in many ways parallels Clara’s relationship with Bill. Clara’s family disapproved of Bill’s background, but Clara loved Bill and married him regardless. Like Ellie, Clara has also fallen in love with Sims Chapel and its natural environment. Despite having been closer to Marie when they were both young women, Clara now also shares Ellie’s appraisal of Marie as a difficult and controlling person, and she willingly helps Ellie evade some of her mother’s attempts at surveillance.

Clara is a warm and generous person who goes out of her way to make Ellie feel welcome: She drives Ellie places, makes her special blackberry cobbler for Ellie, pays Sara’s tutoring fee for Ellie’s math lessons, and offers her niece a sympathetic ear on many occasions. Jack tells Ellie that Clara is the only person aside from Ellie, his mother, and George that makes him feel “like [he is] worth something” (217). As a result of her constant willingness to extend herself for others, Clara is well-known and beloved in Sims Chapel.