Ghost

Castle Cranshaw is the narrator of Ghost and the story’s main character. He is an angry teenager with poor impulse control. Castle is profoundly affected by a night when his father fired a pistol at him and his mother before being apprehended and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His trauma manifests in constant anger, frequent fights at school, and an inability to back down from anyone who is aggressive with him. 

He is protective of his mother and sleeps on a pallet near her bedroom so that he can help her instantly if anything happens. He is also insecure about Glass Manor, the poor neighborhood in which he lives. Castle feels that he is rarely able to make his own first impressions. Whether people judge him from his clothes, the haircuts his mother gives, him, or his neighborhood, he feels as if people think they know things about him that aren’t true. Throughout the story, he shows compassion for anyone who gets bullied, including Brandon, who bullied him before Castle beat him up. 

Castle is ambitious but also undirected. He believes he could break world records, but until he joins the track team, he is never shown putting focused time and effort into any projects.