/lit/ - Literature

>>15084922
i feel like ishmael is more reflective of the average individual and thus the human condition. for the most part he's just a passive observer that frequently intellectualizes and doesn't engage life and as a result gets to live to an ripe old boring age, which affords him the chance to reminisce on the adventure he witnessed. ahab is the guy that people deceive themselves into thinking they are.

>>15084922
for me, its:
Behemoth, Woland and crew from the Master and Margarita
Sun Wukong from Journey to the West
Mephistofeles from Faust (both Marlowe and Goethe)
Snufkin from Moomin

>>15084922

Characters who most seem to exist independent of the work:
>Falstaff
>Hamlet

Characters best embodying a particular archetype:
>Gandalf
>Toad (Wind in the Willows)
>Don Quixote
>Heathcliff

Most comfy, universally-appealing character:
>Sherlock Holmes

Character I personally like the best:
>Caddy Compson (The Sound and the Fury)

Best retard:
>Benjy Compson (The Sound and the Fury)

Characters we come to know best through the course of the work:
>Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment)
>Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre)
>Emma Woodhouse (Emma)

>>15084966
Ishmael represents how people think of themselves, Ahab is how they come off to others.

For me it's Julien Sorel

bump for helpful thread. Great characters truly makes or breaks a book

>>15084922
Frankenstein's Monster. Poor thing.

>>15084922
Corona-chan

>>15084922
Iago

>>15084922

My favorites are Jane Eyre, Ahab, Alyosha, and Stephen Dedalus

>>15085752

That might be a good spin-off thread. "Most loathsome characters in literature". There are so many memorable ones:

>Iago (Othello)
Pure destructive wickedness. He doesn't understand himself and doesn't even try.

>Jason Compson (The Sound And The Fury)
Brilliant portrait. The constant smart-aleck comebacks and retorts he uses to people who are just trying to get along... boy do we end up hating him.

>Mrs Norris (Mansfield Park)
Great example of someone without much power who gets away with being as spiteful as she can possibly be. She can't commit genocide, but she can make sure Fanny doesn't have a fire in her room.

>>15085978
>he actually ended up hating iago

>>15084922
>Don Quixote (and Sancho of course)
>Behemoth/Korovyov
>Gregor Samsa
>Raskolnikov
>Winston Smith
>Odysseus
>Hercule Poirot