/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15640329]

ITT: books where the protagonist is painfully relatable
I'll start

[Anonymous No.15640346]

>>15640329
Hehehe... OP is a big bug...

[Anonymous No.15640350]

my diary desu

[Anonymous No.15640362]

>I feel like shit but look great

[Anonymous No.15640374]

[Anonymous No.15640452]

>>15640329
dangerously based

[Anonymous No.15640466]

>>15640452
meant for >>15640346

[Anonymous No.15640475]

>>15640329
How was this guy so based that he could predict however many thousands of years ago that men would struggle and struggle in a society that doesn't want them only to have women swoop in and do fucking nothing and take over?

[Anonymous No.15640569]

In the sense of being conflicted between a desire for comfort and a desire for adventure, a wish for comfortable routine but simultaneously for excitement and change.

[Anonymous No.15640582]

>>15640569
this, definitely

[Anonymous No.15640772]

>>15640329
The Stranger & Fight Club

[Anonymous No.15641055]

>>15640329
The most relatable part of the book to me is that, when faced with being permanently transformed into a giant insect, his first thought is that he’s going to be late to work

[Anonymous No.15641070]

>>15640772
Mods, please

[Anonymous No.15641278]

>>15640329
Oblomov

[Anonymous No.15642059]

>>15640475
Wait hold on, are you saying Kafka wrote this thousands of years ago? Im pretty sure he wrote his shit in the 1920s possibly 30s. Or are you possibly referring to something else? That wouldnt make any sense though, since you are responding to OP who posted Kafka. What are you even, some kind of retard?

[Anonymous No.15642236]

Young adult novel
It’s like I’m living in a Japanese animé

[Anonymous No.15642390]

>>15642059
>I'm the retard

[Anonymous No.15642403]

I relate with Colonel Aureliano. His success is overshadowed by the fact he didn't win in the end. Also being a sad fuck and failure with women.

[Anonymous No.15642592]

I'd say Stoner and Flowers for Algernon, I greatly enjoyed the sections where they find an intellectual equal for a moment in their life and then its ripped away from them. It happened to me last year and now she's gone.

[Anonymous No.15642614]

No Longer Human

[Anonymous No.15642875]

>>15640329
The stranger

[Anonymous No.15642892]

[Anonymous No.15642921]

>>15642592
>>15642614
These. Just finished Catcher in the Rye (literally minutes ago) and I'd add it to the list. These books are peak alienationcore (you can add the stranger and the metamorphosis, but these protagonists just lacked a sort of humanity that's developed in the other four books, they're more one dimensional, or at least that's what I tell myself because I didnt relate to them as holistically).

[Anonymous No.15642974]

[Anonymous No.15643761]

>>15641070
Do you have anything to contribute to this board or? :)

[Anonymous No.15643806]

Of course we all relate to the Brothers Karamazov!

[Anonymous No.15643810]

>>15642403
His "success"
>lost almost every battle
>led millions into death
>even his own party was sick of him and wanted to stop
> in the end they compromised what they wanted to begin with resulting in little to no change which is meant to show the futility and destruction of the war, both on a personal and national level

[Anonymous No.15643819]

>>15641055
I think the story made me sad because he felt like his family are relying on him to be the successful one and now he can’t support them so he sees himself a failure

[Anonymous No.15643830]

>>15640569
must suck buying shoes

[Anonymous No.15643831]

Emma bovary

[Anonymous No.15643840]

>>15643831
cute

[Anonymous No.15643870]

>>15641055
>>15643819
That's essentially the point. Kafka famously felt very constrained by his family, his father in particular when growing up, and his writing seemed to be the way he separated himself as an individual.
Gregor Samsa is essentially a medicore version of Kafka himself, with his own anxieties, but absolutely no sense of self. His only concerns are his work/family.
The absurd notion of being transformed into a giant bug, yet that still not being your main concern is to highlight that extreme. He regresses more and more into a buglike state the more his family treat him that way, his stoic acceptance is the annihilation of the self. He dies because he realises he can never be a help but only a hindrance.

It can be "painfully relatable" two-fold: we sometimes don't help our families more than we harm them, and sometimes those who are supposed to love you never raise you with a sense of self. There is an expectancy at the beginning about his family essentially taking their living from him and each of them slowly regains their own self while Gregor loses every trace of his.

[Anonymous No.15643999]

Confessions of a Mask

I'm not gay or into death but I feel very similar for different reasons.

[Anonymous No.15644172]

>>15642592
Stoner is so heartbreakingly infuriating

[Anonymous No.15644398]

Steppenwolf

[Anonymous No.15645038]

>>15640329

[Anonymous No.15645073]

Whatever, Atomised, Platform, Serotonin

[Anonymous No.15645087]

>>15645038
What a horrible cover.

[Anonymous No.15645095]

This sadly

[Anonymous No.15645126]

>>15641278
>>15645038
This. Somewhat lazy, too imaginative and with light misanthropic tendencies.

People also say I'm smart, but I don't feel like I really am.

[Anonymous No.15645282]

The underground man is highly relatable

[Anonymous No.15645295]

Protagonist from The Double

[Anonymous No.15645345]

>>15645282
Found the book really cringe desu
Made me lose my will to read more into Dostoy

[Anonymous No.15645520]

The reality that many of you on this board have not read this book is a travesty. Ignatius is all of us. I talk like him now.

[Anonymous No.15645532]

>>15645520
Whoa!

[Anonymous No.15645614]

>>15645345
Kind of felt the same (especialy on the first part), but I finished "Crime and Punishmet" a couple days ago and I really enjoyed. You should give it a try even if you disliked "Notes From the Undergraund".

The character's ideas and personal philosophies are delivered in a much less "in your face" way in C&P than in NFU, so no ongoing rants about society. It has more characters and it is heavier in interactions and subplots while maintaining cohesion via related themes and message. So, less "cringy" and more appealing.

[Anonymous No.15645623]

>>15645614
*Underground

[Anonymous No.15646052]

>>15645345
Underground man is supposed to be cringe

The scene where people are having a party and he's just pacing the room for 2 hours is peak cringekino

[Anonymous No.15647238]

>>15640329
Read this recently and it reminded me of someone dealing with mental illness.
When someone struggles the people close to them ultimately just want them to disappear so they don't have to be burdened.

[Anonymous No.15648045]

>>15644398
just read it, it's good

[Anonymous No.15648288]

>>15640329
>Crime and Punishment
I tried to be the overman in high school but I was just gay.
>The Moviegoer
I'm continually dissatisfied with my life but instead of fixing myself I blame the world.
>Faust
I sought knowledge with no regard as to why I sought it.

[Anonymous No.15648580]

Painfully relatable with Flaubert's l'Education sentimentale and Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu