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Top 5 Literary Characters

Carvalho Diablo

By Carvalho Diablo,
in GF - General Forum

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Carvalho Diablo Grand Master

Carvalho Diablo

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In no particular order :

 

DS Bruce Robo Robertson, Filth by Irvine Welsh. Total and utter, grade A cunt. Funny as fuck.

 

Patrick Bateman, American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. 100% testosterone, 200% maniac.

 

Bokonon, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Boko Maru, it could be for you ?

 

Owen Meany, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. GOD'S INSTRUMENT.

 

Captain Ahab, Moby Dick by Hermann Melville.

 

With the exception of Moby Dick, all great books and all wonderfully vivid characters.

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Dr Nowt
Dr Nowt

Hank Chinaski - Various but not Women, which was like a band's cocaine years, only showing glimpses and sorely lacking the character balance in the rest of the original trilogy and Ham on Rye.   Ig

Mook
Mook

This cunt.  

robbiefowler9 Experienced

robbiefowler9

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Winston Smith, 1984 by George Orwell

 

Satan, Paradise Lost by John Milton

 

Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Prince Hamlet, Hamlet by William Shakespeare

 

Mr Kurtz, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 

I like characters that subvert expectation and have a thinly veiled "dark side" or chronic weakness that undoes them.

 

Also, honourable mention to Meursault from The Outsider by Albert Camus.

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piscinin Mentor

piscinin

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Winston Smith, 1984 by George Orwell

 

Satan, Paradise Lost by John Milton

 

Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Prince Hamlet, Hamlet by William Shakespeare

 

Mr Kurtz, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 

I like characters that subvert expectation and have a thinly veiled "dark side" or chronic weakness that undoes them.

 

Also, honourable mention to Meursault from The Outsider by Albert Camus.

 

Very nice selection. Holden Caulfield (Catcher on the Rye), Harry Haller (Steppenwolf) and The Underground Man (Notes from Underground) would complement them well.

 

Iskaral Pust (Malazan Book of The Fallen) too, but that would ruin the tone.

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Pidge Grand Master

Pidge

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Oooh, now I have to delineate great characters from great novels? Hmm, Gregor Samsa, the dude from Nausea, King Lamus (Diary of a Drug Fiend), the Joker all fail to make the cut somehow. Love Don Quixote too, but I never finished it (although I know the ending) and need to pick it up again at some point.

 

Rogozhin - The Idiot (Dostoyevsky), the images of this man are burned on my imagination for life. What a book! What a scumbag! Aglaya, the Prince and Nastasya all great characters.

 

Rincewind - The Colour of Magic (Pratchett) This is a book about possibility, a character who believes anything is possible meets the man who understands just how frightening that thought is.

 

Nekhlyudov - Resurrection (Tolstoy) Because humans beings are like rivers, bitch. Basically just an avatar of Tolstoy's philosophy, but that's brilliant enough to make a great character.

 

The Old Man - The Old Man and The Sea (Hemingway) A perfect story. '"I told the boy I was a strange old man" he said. "Now is when I must prove it." The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again.'

 

Loki - The Eddas. Fuck it, I wanted to avoid the ancients, Achilles or David or Krishna's mental mind-expanding rambling in the Bhagavad Gita. But Loki is more than just the archetype he is often referred to as (and was used as right back into the Norse times), Satan + ambiguity (not referring to Paradise Lost - never read it, will do soon).

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AngryOfTuebrook Grand Master

AngryOfTuebrook

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Off the top of my head...

 

Mack - Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss

 

Leland Stamper - Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

 

Richard II - Richard II by William Shakespeare

 

Owen Meaney - A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

 

Casaubon - Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

 

 

Being weak and flawed often makes a character strangely heroic.

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Sugar Ape Grand Master

Sugar Ape

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Behemoth - The master and margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

 

Going to bed now I'll do the rest tomorrow.

 

Dr Henry Jekyll, - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

 

Count Dracula - Dracula by Bram Stoker.

 

Richard Hannay - The 39 steps ( and others ) by John Buchan.

 

Sherlock Holmes - Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

I love the Holmes book, I read them first when I was about 11, probably didn't get most of them, but loved them all the same. I'm on my 3rd version of the complete Sherlock Holmes as the binding tends to give way after a couple of reads due to the size of it. I try and read them in full every 3-4 years. Probably due another go soon actually.

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VladimirIlyich Grand Master

VladimirIlyich

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Yossarian - Catch 22

 

Dr Gonzo - Various HST texts

 

Philip Marlow - The Long Goodbye and others

 

Pete Bondurant - American Tabloid etc

 

Dream - The Sandman Chronicles

 

Top five of the top of my head right now.

 

Some ace shouts on here already. Can't think of five others at the moment so it's just three for now.

 

Nick Corey, Pop 1280

 

Kemper Boyd, American Tabloid

 

Begbie, Trainspotting and Porno.

 

Great shouts and a great novel.

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Croque Monsieur Experienced

Croque Monsieur

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It looks like he's grooming those unsuspecting young lads.

 

As for naming my top five literary characters, I'm afraid on that score I'm fooked; I'm not particularly well-read.

 

I recently revisited the first two Adrian Mole books though. I still found them as funny now as I did when I first read them almost twenty-five years ago.

 

I love Tom Sharpe's work as well. Skullion and Kommandant van Heerden are fine comic creations.

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L19red Experienced

L19red

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Ivan Denisovich - A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Atticus Finch - To Kill a Mocking Bird

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille - Perfume

George and Lenny - Of Mice and Men. Inseperable so I'm counting them as one pick

Tintin - Any of 23 books

 

It was a struggle to leave out Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.

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