The Arm of the Starfish

Plot summary

The plot centers on a young marine biology student named Adam Eddington, who travels to the remote island Gaea off the coast of Portugal for a summer job working for a famous scientist, Calvin O'Keefe. Even before he leaves JFK airport, Adam is approached by Carolyn ("Kali") Cutter, the beautiful, well-traveled daughter of a rich American industrialist living in Europe. She warns Adam against yet another passenger, Canon Tallis. Tallis is accompanying Calvin O'Keefe's eldest daughter, 12-year-old Polly O'Keefe, to Geneva, but bad weather and mysterious dangers derail those plans. Instead, Adam finds himself shepherding Polly on a short flight from Madrid to Lisbon. When Polly uses the restroom during the flight, she seems to disappear from the airplane completely, and the flight crew denies she was ever on board. Kali's father, Typhon Cutter, later enables Adam to rescue Polly from her kidnappers, deepening Adam's confusion about whom to trust. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that at least two different factions have equally strong but differently motivated interests in Dr. O'Keefe's research on organ regeneration. Adam faces a number of ethical dilemmas as he is forced to choose between these factions.

Eventually Adam realizes that the O'Keefes are the ones who care about "the fall of the sparrow," as their friend Joshua Archer puts it, a Biblical allusion to caring about others, even the seemingly weak and unimportant. Adam wants nothing further to do with Kali and her ruthless father, but the O'Keefes ask him to make a date with Kali anyway, so that Adam can act as a double agent, passing along fake research papers to the Cutters and smuggling the real ones out to trusted people in Lisbon. Adam reluctantly agrees. This plan is complicated, however, by Kali's unexpected claim that she has learned of her father's perfidy, and wants Adam to protect her and keep her confidences. Adam's attempt to do so makes it nearly impossible to pass on the real papers, hampered as he is by Kali's presence and spies from both sides. Eventually Joshua comes to Adam's rescue, but is shot dead; and Adam learns that Kali was acting on her father's behalf all along. The Cutters are not arrested.

Later, Adam goes back to the Cutters' hotel to retrieve his passport from Kali. Playfully, she makes him chase her into the ocean, where she is attacked by a shark. Adam uses a special knife Polly gave him to fight off the shark and get Kali to shore. O'Keefe uses his experimental knowledge about limb regeneration to help Kali.

Adam Eddington

Intelligent, principled and a bit naive, 16-year-old Adam Eddington is a biology major who has been interning at Woods Hole, Massachusetts in the summers, until "Old Doc" Didymus sends him to work with Calvin O'Keefe instead. The Arm of the Starfish is Adam's first appearance in L'Engle's novels, and his only appearance in the O'Keefe series. He later appears in the Austin family novels A Ring of Endless Light and Troubling a Star.

Polyhymnia ("Poly") O'Keefe

12-year-old Poly is red-haired, and describes herself as having measurements of "twenty, twenty, twenty." Intelligent, inquisitive and loving, Poly speaks English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Gaean. The Arm of the Starfish is Poly's first appearance, as such, but Meg Murry O'Keefe was pregnant with her at the time of A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Her unusual first name was bestowed on her by Canon Tallis, after which the O'Keefes did not allow him to name their other children. In later books, Poly begins to spell her name Polly to avoid awkward explanations about being named after Polyhymnia, the Greek muse of sacred music, and to keep people from pronouncing it with a long o.

Charles O'Keefe

Charles O'Keefe is Poly's eldest younger brother, the closest to her in both age and companionship. Quiet, thoughtful and empathic, Charles shows signs of having special mental abilities, much like Charles Wallace Murry, the uncle for whom he is named.

Canon John Tallis

Canon Tallis is a bald clergyman with no eyebrows, said to have lost his hair due to withstanding torture in Korea. Brusque and incisive, and not at all pious by L'Engle's definition, he defies the conventional image of a priest, and seems more than a little sinister to Adam at first. An Episcopal Canon, he is surprisingly adept (but not perfect) at navigating the dangerous waters of international intrigue. Canon Tallis reappears in the Austin family novel The Young Unicorns, where he is attached to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the same cathedral where Madeleine L'Engle was writer in residence for many years. He also appears in the second O'Keefe family novel, Dragons in the Waters. Tallis is nicknamed "Tom" or "Father Tom" because of the historical composer Thomas Tallis, who wrote the Tallis Canon.

Dr. Calvin O'Keefe

Calvin O'Keefe is a marine biologist, husband of Meg, and the father of seven children, the eldest of whom is Poly. Calvin first appeared in A Wrinkle in Time, as a 14-year-old high school junior, a popular and athletic but neglected adolescent from a family with eleven children. As an adult, Calvin is a loving and attentive father.

Margaret ("Meg") Murry O'Keefe

Meg O'Keefe is the former Meg Murry, who rescued her father from the planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time. As of The Arm of the Starfish, she is a scientist and mathematician (albeit without a doctorate) who assists Calvin with his work, while also helping to raise her large family. In contrast to her awkward adolescence, she is described as "a tall, strikingly beautiful woman" as an adult.

Nomenclature

Many of the characters in The Arm of the Starfish are named after Biblical or religious figures. The surname of the duplicitous Dr. Eliphaz Ball is initially misunderstood by Adam as Baal, a name given to a number of deities considered "false gods" by the Hebrews in ancient times. The name "Eliphaz" recalls the name of one of the comforters of Job; the Biblical Eliphaz believed that the righteous and just did not suffer, but that secret sins might be punished by God—a belief stated at the end of the Book of Job to be wrong. The concierge at the Ritz Hotel is called Arcangelo. Doc Didymus shares a name with the Apostle Thomas as well as the ecclesiastical writer Didymus the Blind. There is even a special dolphin named after a famed 4th century Cappadoccian ascetic, Macrina, who apparently has two brothers Gregory (i.e. Saint Gregory of Nyssa) and Basil (i.e. Basil the Great of Caesarea). (The name Basil is later reused for another dolphin of Adam's acquaintance in A Ring of Endless Light.) Macrina's mended fin evokes the historical Macrina's scar, which her brother Gregory writes about in his Life of Macrina. Canon Tallis is named after English liturgical composer Thomas Tallis, and of course the name Adam is from Genesis. Classical names used in the book include Polyhymnia, the fictional Portuguese island of Gaea, named for a Greek goddess associated with the Earth, and Typhon, the deadliest monster in Greek mythology and the legendary "Father of Monsters." Finally, the names of Kali Cutter and Joshua Archer are significant. Kali is the name of the Hindu goddess of change, power and destruction, while the girl's surname indicates that she and her father have the power to cut (i.e., wound) others, both figuratively and literally. Joshua, by contrast, bears the Hebrew name of two Biblical figures: Joshua, a commander who fought at God's command, and Jesus.