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<title> Ellen Foster: A caring girl searching for affection </title>
Ellen is the protagonist of the story and she is also the one who tells us a part of her childhood story. I have sometimes had a hard time to interpret her personality traits, since they are not clearly spelled out. I though believe Ellen shows many different traits, both good and bad, and they are revealed to the reader through her own thoughts and actions. I will concentrate on three of her traits, but also give my reflections on several others. I will begin by showing her signs of maturity and then I give a description of the caring girl followed by a description of a girl that at first has trouble with coloured people. 
Ellen is a very grown up girl, acting very responsible, even though she is very young. Already in the beginning of the book you understand that she has to take care of herself and the household duties in her home. She says that she cooks for both her father and herself (p.3) and when the lights are off in the winter she has to ask her father to take her into town with some money to get the light back on (p.24). On this same page she tells us how she takes some money out of the envelope that her father's brother gives her father, just so that she can pay the bills. When she later in the book is sitting in court with Roy and Julia she reason -"What do you do when the judge talks about the family society's cornerstone but you know yours was never a Roman pillar but is and always has been crumbly old brick?" (p.56). We can also follow her thought when she has decided to accept the situation living with her aunt and her daughter -"I decided that if I quit wasting time I could be happy as anybody else in the future and right now with one year ending and a new one staring up I thought now was the time to get old Ellen squared away for a fresh start" (p.95). These last two thoughts I believe are proofs of her maturity, but I also believe the maturity is shown through her caring side. 
On the first page you can read -"All I did was wish him dead real hard every now and then. And I can say for a fact that I am better off now than when he was alive" and some pages later you can follow her thoughts -"I try not to leave her by herself with him". You get picture of Ellen as a caring person that is worrying about her mother and her father's actions. Her mother is ill and she likes to lie close to her (p.7). One thing that strikes me is that she is even caring for her father and grandmother, those who have made her life hard. She is defending her father's behaviour by saying that when God made her father he must not have been thinking straight (p.48). Even if she did not like her grandmother she was again very caring when she got ill. She took care of her helping her and even tried to save her life when she stopped breathing (p.77). A very important figure in Ellen's life is Starletta who she really cares for and longs for even though she has doubts at the beginning.
For obvious reasons Ellen does not care much for coloured people, but she slowly changes her mind. She says -"I do not think I could drink after them" (p.29). One morning she wakes up after sleeping at Starletta's house she is saying to herself -"...I was surprised because it did not feel like I had slept in a coloured house", but still she has an excuse for her feelings -"I cannot say I officially slept in the bed because I stayed in my coat on top of the covers". Later she even becomes proud of Starletta, going to the movies, thinking -"Starletta was the only coloured girl at the movies and she was mine". Towards the end of the book she says that it makes her ashamed to have thought things like that and she realizes they can be good as anyone else (p.85).
There are so much more to say about Ellen's character than what I have put forward. She learns a lot during her journey, not just about coloured people, but about trust in general. She is again and again let down by those closest to her, which makes you wonder from where she gets all her strength. Even if she sometimes shows signs of not believing in herself, she never let go of her hopes and dreams -"I reminded Jesus that this is not the way a girl needs to be. I told him again to please settle up with me so I could be pure girl again and somebody good could love me" (p.93). The book, I believe, ends with her getting everything she did put down on her lists, everything that she believes a family should have (p.67).
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