Dec 28, 2009

The Star | Characters

Narrator
The entire story consists of the male narrator’s reflections on what he has learned during a scientific mission to investigate a ‘‘white dwarf,’’ a sun in a distant galaxy that became a supernova and burned itself out thousands of years earlier. The reader learns that he is a Jesuit priest and an astrophysicist aboard a starship, and that he has been fighting a ‘‘private, good-natured, but fundamentally serious war’’ against the atheism of the crew. The findings of the mission cause him to question the foundations of his faith.

...