The Narrator
Not to be confused with the author, the narrator is not just the main character of the book, but the only significant one. Interestingly, one of those definitive conventions applicable to determination of character is a name which the narrator does not share, self-referencing only within the limitations of first-person pronouns. That the narrative is not given a name should be strongly considered when questioning whether this text is to be considered strictly an autobiographical sketch or rather some strange kind of non-fiction/fiction hybrid. It may help clarify exactly where within generic categorization the book falls to learn that at one point during the evolution of the book, the author had considered making the narrator a fictional male character.
Ellery Channing
By way of contrast, there is one figure in the story who actually is given a name by which it is subsequently referred to on a number of occasions. Other than this one single aspect of characterization, however, Ellery Channing falls well short of rising to the level of essential individual within the narrative. To wit: Ellery is the name the narrative has given to darkly hued reddish-orange goldfish purchased for a quarter. The goldfish was named in thematic honor of another writer of a famous text about living closer to nature, Henry David Thoreau. Channing was himself one of the Transcendentalist poets and a neighbor of Nathanael Hawthorne.
