Content Warning: This section references sexual assault/sex with a minor.

Artemis’s protagonist and narrator is Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara, an unlikely hero full of sarcasm and intelligence. Jazz is a Saudi Arabian citizen but has lived on Artemis since she was six; she and her father, Ammar, immigrated to the lunar settlement when she was a child after her mother left. Jazz was raised by her devoutly Muslim father and excelled in school, though she habitually avoids pressure and high expectations. Jazz’s oldest friend is her pen pal from Kenya, Kelvin. In her second letter to Kelvin, she expresses her life’s ambition: “[W]hen I grow up I want to be rich” (22).

Jazz’s youth was fraught with impulsive decisions and teenage rebellion, centering on substance use and a sexual relationship with a man she later discovered to be a pedophile. Her recklessness resulted in the loss of her father’s workshop, and Jazz carries the shame and guilt of this moment into adulthood, where it influences many of her actions. The debt to her father hangs over her, driving her to agree to Trond’s sabotage contract. Her ex-boyfriend’s involvement in the incident also impacts her ability to trust others—as does the infidelity of a later boyfriend, Tyler.