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Favourite Literary Characters?

Kenickie

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I wanna know!

Sherlock Holmes -
My Nan had huge volumes of all of the sherlock holmes stories, complete with maps and illustrations and diagrams. I was enraptured with this long fingered almost magician person as a child. I even started playing violin because i loved how he played violin after solving a case or when he was stuck on something. i didn't realize he was also an IV cokehead until later :D

Ron Weasly-
because he fucking owns and ends up (along with hermoine) saving the fucking day all the time.

I'm sure I'll think of others later =D
 
'George Smiley' a recurring protagonist in John Le Carre (David John Moore Cornwell's) early cold war intrigue novels . hope my memory is still accurate !
 
commander Sam Vimes of the discworld novels by terry pratchett.

my ex-girlfriends dad was in the Met police and reminded me of him for a long while.
 
I'm reading A Song of Ice and Fire series before they make it into an HBO series, and while there are like 032984928750394875 characters every book (i'm on 3), i'm terribly terribly in love with the bastard Jon Snow, his royal blooded sister Arya, and the twins who rule the house of Lannister -- the incestuous couple Cersei and Jamie.
 
sherlock holmes is high on my list too but my all time favorite has always been mercutio
 
If Nabokov's Humbert Humbert (of lolita fame) were to talk about men the same way he talked about "nymphets", he would practically be me. I wouldn't say he's my favourite, but he is definitely close to being.

Nabokov, aside from being a synaesthete as I am, is the closest in text I've seen to emulating my inner-dialogue.

If I were to ever pick a favourite fiction character, off the top of my head, it would be Sheikh Sama'an from the chapter of the same name in Attar's "Conference of the Birds".
 
i also adore Orlando from the book of the same name by Virginia Woolf.

Françoise from She Came to Stay by Simone De Beauvoir, although sometimes I feel a lot like Xaviere.
 
Mustapha Mond, from brave new world, and maybe Ransom from Prerelandra, that guy has the worst fucking luck
 
OMG, how could I ever forget?

Scratch Humbert and Sam'an.

My favourite character is most definitely a woman named Haidée Lamoureaux from Aliester Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend. Apparently she is based on a real person named Jane (something), I forgot her last name. From what I'd read, she actually recovered from her lifelong addiction and lived as a hermit for the rest of her life.
 
My favorite character from a recent book-
Budai from Frenc Karinthy's Metropole. Budai is a linguist who is on his way to Helsinki for a conference but somehow gets lost in a country where he is unable to communicate. I can identify for his search for understanding in a world that seems without reason.

Character that has made an impact on my way of thinking-

Nimrod as portrayed in Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Another character struggling with the loss of language and condemned for his affront against God.
 
Mick Kelly in Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - I really related to the thoughts of this girl coming of age. The development of this character is amongst the best I've ever read.

Both Briony & Cecelia in Ian McEwan's Atonement - Cecelia in the first half of the book & Briony in the second. If you've read the book you probably understand why. :)
 
I honestly can't pick one; partly because I'm more of a nonfiction reader, partly because there's something I like about every memorable protagonist. The best I can do is a few runners-up:

Wendell Urth: Character from some of Isaac Asimov's early SF stories; basically a futuristic Sherlock Holmes, but wittier and more eccentric.

Leto Atreides II: God-Emperor of Dune--sees all, knows all. A simultaneously terrifying and tragic figure, if you know his back-story and fate.

Glen Bateman: My favorite character from King's The Stand; inspired me to take sociology. :)

Mugo: From Ngũgĩ's A Grain of Wheat; the literary character who has undeniably had the greatest influence on my own writing.

Mandella: From Haldeman's The Forever War; his sarcastic cynicism has also tremendously influenced my style.
 
I often have a hard time relating to fictional characters, but I really like John Crowley's portrayal of Giordano Bruno in the Ægypt cycle.
 
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