Ramón Salazar is the 16-year-old protagonist of the novel. He describes himself as weak, saying, “I am not scrawny, yet I am small for my age and thin. My wrists are very thin and my father was ashamed of them” (11). Ramón’s insecurity over his physical appearance reflects his relationship with his father and his masculinity; he wants to make his father proud, and the only way he can imagine doing so is by embodying conventionally masculine virtues like strength and courage.

The novel follows Ramón as he grows from a boy into a man. His motivations change over the course of the narrative, morphing from the desire to make his father proud, to proving his manliness to Ruiz, and finally to recognizing his own autonomy and ability to lead. Since Blas and Ruiz are the standards against which Ramón has been measuring his own masculinity, he is only able to decide his identity for himself after both men have died. At the end of the novel, Ramón recognizes the Manta Diablo’s beauty, echoing the respect that he now has for the ocean. His relationship to faith is also different than his father’s; given the opportunity, Ramón’s decides to give the black pearl back to the Madonna as “a gift of adoration […] a gift of love” (95) rather than as an attempt to control the natural world or to ensure his own prosperity.