44 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingFinders Keepers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Pete Saubers
Pete Saubers is the protagonist of the novel, and is 13 years old at the beginning of the text. He is intelligent and his love of literature, specifically John Rothstein’s Gold trilogy, informs the themes of How Literature Shapes Lives and The Relationship Between Authors and Readers. His good grades and reputation with his teachers enable him to skip school without punishment, enabling much of his behavior during the novel. Pete also cares deeply for his family, using the found money to support his financially struggling family and ease the strain on his parents’ marriage. His initial inspiration to sell the notebooks comes because his sister, Tina, wants to attend an expensive private school, which he believes would greatly benefit her.
Ultimately, Pete’s love of his family, particularly Tina, saves him, giving him a way out of his obsession with the notebooks. When he initially contemplates burning the notebooks in the rec center basement, he doubts his resolve to do it because he loves Rothstein’s writing. This choice between Tina’s life and the notebooks emphasizes The Dangers of Obsession. However, Pete realizes that the fictional characters in Rothstein’s novels are “real to [Morris] in a way Pete’s sister is not” (402), recognizing that Morris’s obsession with the Gold trilogy has replaced his empathy for the real people around him. Pete, however, realizes that his love for his family is more important than literature, freeing him from their grasp.
Morris Bellamy
Morris Bellamy is the central antagonist of the text. The inciting incident of the novel is his murder of John Rothstein and theft of his money and notebooks. During the 35 years between his burial of the notebooks, Morris’s obsession with them grows along with his alienation from the outside world. This illustrates How Literature Shapes Lives, suggesting that people who are alienated from society find solace and companionship in literature. However, this love of literature has a dark underside, emphasized by the theme of The Dangers of Obsession. Throughout the novel, Morris consistently prioritizes the notebooks over human life, demonstrating that he doesn’t understand the proportional importance of literature. He murders not only Rothstein but also Andy without hesitation, shoots Laura in the head, and plans to kill Tina and Pete to get the notebooks. In part, this is likely related to his total alienation from other people in the real world. King suggests through Morris that literature should not be used as a replacement for human companionship. Ultimately, even a fire is not enough to stop Morris, who proves himself to value the notebooks even over his own life.
Morris serves as a foil to Pete throughout the novel. The two are similar in many ways, both falling in love with literature through Rothstein’s Gold trilogy during their sophomore year of high school. Further, they grow up in the same house on Sycamore Street. However, the two are very different in the extent to which they value literature: Both find strength and comfort in books, but only Morris values literature over human life. While Pete ultimately chooses to protect his sister over the notebooks, Morris sacrifices his life for them. In this way, King suggests that The Relationship Between Authors and Readers is potentially complex and fraught via Morris’s obsession with Rothstein. While on the surface his obsession indicates a true appreciation for Rothstein’s writing, Morris lacks respect for the author’s intentions and wishes, indicating that he wishes to keep the Gold character for himself.
Kermit William “Bill” Hodges
Bill Hodges is a 66-year-old private investigator and the protagonist of the Bill Hodges trilogy, of which Finders Keepers is the second installment. Despite this, Hodges acts as more of an intermediary character in this novel, observing, analyzing, and interpreting the events of the main plot for the reader and connecting the novel to the first and final books of the trilogy. Along with his partner, Holly Gibney, Hodges runs his own firm, Finders Keepers, helping people with cases beyond the reach of the police. In the preceding novel of the trilogy, Mr. Mercedes, Hodges solves the Mercedes Killer case, in which a man named Brady Hartsfield killed several people after driving into a crowd. King portrays Hodges as brave and protective. He regularly instructs Holly and Jerome to remain behind when he enters a dangerous situation. In the climax of the text, he risks his own life to save Tina and Pete in hand-to-hand battle with Morris, who has a gun.
Throughout Finders Keepers, the events of the case haunt Hodges, particularly the loss of the woman he loved, Janey. Hodges’s main motivation for helping Tina and Pete is his desire to save them from Janey’s fate. This obsession, unlike Pete and Morris’s, ultimately helps his young client, providing a counterpoint to the theme of The Dangers of Obsession. For example, though Hartsfield is in a comatose state and not directly involved in the events of Finders Keepers, Hodges visits him frequently throughout the novel, revealing his continued obsession with the case. Though Hodges’s belief that Hartsfield is faking his comatose state does not align with modern understandings of traumatic brain injury, the supernatural aspect of Hartsfield’s predicament, which King introduces to this plot line toward the end of the novel, suggests that something other than brain injury is going on and sets up the events of the final novel in the trilogy.
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