George Washington Crosby is the protagonist of Tinkers and his deathbed ruminations provide the memories that comprise the plot of the novel. In his final days, he is surrounded by his loving family and his accomplishments as a skilled clock repairperson. Like his father before him, he is a tinker who takes great joy in his work, though George specifically fixes clocks and his father fixed all sorts of broken objects. Clocks are so important to George that he associates his own mortality with them; he is comforted by the clocks’ ticking, feeling like “the blood in his veins and the breath in his chest seemed to go easier as he heard the ratchet and click of the springs being wound and the rising chorus of clocks, which did not seem to him to tick but to breathe” (45). George associates himself so closely with his clocks that he experiences their ticking as mirroring his own breathing lungs and beating heart, though he is constantly aware that his life is winding down even as time goes on.

Beside his deep attachment to his clocks, George is also very concerned about his family.