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<title> An abandoned child determined to live on </title>
The intention of this essay is to shed some light on the character of the main character of the book "Ellen Foster". Her name is Ellen and has been through many tough things in her past. Despite this she seems a strong person with the ability to survive. The fact that she knows that those bad things are not her fault is crucial for her future. After she becomes part of a happy family she has the time to realize there are people worse off than she is. Ellen is the narrator of this book and therefore everything we get to know about anything in the book goes through her. Because of this we can get to know things about her, that she does not know herself, through retold facts about reactions of other characters.
The protagonist of "Ellen Foster" Ellen is at one point in the book a child who has gone through some rather bad things in her past. Some of those bad things were: her mother's sickness; her father's abusive behavior towards her and her sick mother; the death of her mother, father, and grandmother; she being accused by her grandmother of having helped her father murder her own mother. Knowing of these events we could expect Ellen to be a complete nervous wreck or a severely mentally damaged problem child. I get the impression she is neither. Still of course she is negatively affected in many ways by the events in her past. "And there was a day last year when she said if I didn't cry sooner or later I would bust. /... / I think how good it would feel but there is always my mama's mama's voice telling me to cry so she can slap me." (Chapter 15) Ellen is afraid that by crying she shows a sign of weakness towards her long since deceased grandmother, who she would not want to give after to. Her true weakness here is only the fact that she listens to her grandmother, that she is taking her seriously. Throughout the novel Ellen shows her mental strength in different situations. When her mother dies she is left alone, "to her own self" as she would say, because her father is not the kind of father she wishes around, rather dead in fact, so she avoids him. She struggles on persistently to make an own living and shows great enterprise being so young. "I fed myself OK. /... I found the best deal was the plate froze with food already on it." (Chapter 5) She buys herself Christmas presents. "When I found them the next day I was very surprised in the spirit of Christmas." (Chapter 5) But her strength has a limit and at the maybe most crucial moment of the whole book she is ready to give up unless there is someone to help her. "So I stood in front of her house with my box and tried not to think about where I would go if she said she had a house full of girls already. And I decided that if she turned me down I would just have to give up." 
"But I did not kill her just like I did not kill my mama or my daddy." (Chapter 11) Ellen knows that none of the bad things that happened to her is her fault. This knowledge is the main difference between being a victim with an uncertain future and having control over the situation. Even if she has things to get over she has a steadfast ground to stand on with this crucial knowledge, and together with her new loving home she might as well be more or less recovered one day. "I have some other things to work on but at least I am somewhere friendly and nothing new bad has happened to me since I got here." (Chapter 15) Being somewhere friendly gives her the room for relaxing and thinking. Earlier she had to worry too much about her own living. Now she is able to show concern for other people, which is a sign of getting along in the right direction. She realizes she is not the only victim. Her friend Starletta is a colored girl in a society that says it is a disadvantage to be colored. As a white girl Ellen has too had rascist-influenced thoughts but which she directly had inherited from society. In time she realizes that it is wrong, that all human beings are alike despite the color of their skin, which shows she is open minded. "When I stayed with my mama's mama I made a list of all that I wanted my family to be and I put down white and have running water. Now it makes me ashamed to think I said that." (Chapter 12)
The technique by which we get to know the characters is through a narrator that is the main character in the story. She tells us most of what happens in the past tense but some things happens in the present tense. Since the narrator, Ellen, participates in the story, and cannot have an objective perspective we get to know only what she chooses to tell us. At times she could be angling the story a bit whether she knows it or not and whether she intends it or not. Since she is our only way of learning this story she is our only source of information about events and characters. Some things she might not tell us straight out, but she tells us about reactions from other characters in the story. These reactions, if they concern Ellen, can tell us about her personality. They can even tell us things about herself that she has not thought about. She does not have to understand reactions and events to describe them. "No Ellen. The problem is not in the name. (Her new last name "Foster") The problem is WHY you feel you need another identity.
Not identity. Just a new name I wanted to write that big across the sky so he would understand and the picking into my head would stop." (Chapter 12) The way Ellen acts in here can be interpreted in different ways, which would alter the characterization. Either she knows why she took the name, just for the sake of the name, or she does want another identity and the psychiatrist she talks to knows her better. There is no telling which it is in the book, and as I see it, it is up to the reader to decide. The fact is that she has been trough some rather bad things for a child.
Ellen Foster is a person determined to live on and she is affected by her past. But with a new loving family and by knowing that none of whatever bad things that happened to her is her fault, she has a bright future waiting. Buy inviting a colored person into her home in an age of accepted racism the shows she is open minded. Ellen Foster is the narrator of the novel and she gives her version of what happens. It is our only source of information and in some specific situations we can not be sure whether she completely understands herself and the world around her.
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