Twelve-year-old Ellie is the protagonist and first-person narrator of Starfish. The audience experiences the narrative through Ellie’s poems. Ellie’s words are important to her; she considers herself a storyteller, and her poetry a space of self-expression and emotional processing. Over the course of the novel, Ellie learns to accept herself and stand up for herself.

Ellie’s main conflicts are both internal and external. She struggles to find self-acceptance and the confidence to stand up for herself against bullying and abuse from both peers and family. A key conflict for Ellie is her relationships with her family, particularly Mom. Mom constantly criticizes Ellie’s weight, and Ellie feels that her mother sees her as a “thing” rather than a person. The former wants Ellie to undergo bariatric surgery, while Ellie wishes that Mom would love and support her as she is. At school, Ellie faces taunts and outright abuse from other students because of her weight.

Ellie’s primary struggle is with her self-image. She feels immense shame and believes that “You don’t deserve / to be seen or heard, / to take up room / to be noticed” (5). She internalizes the words of both Mom and her classmates, seeing herself as a “whale.