Character you associate with most in literature and why?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Apologies for the somewhat "geekiness" of the question but it's just a passing whim. So who is the character you associate with most in literature and why? Don't think too deep just pick the one that comes to mind.

I've already said Jude Fawley from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy because I suppose I associate with his uphill struggle in life and his burning desire to be part of the university elite to my life, in ways anyway. He is an outsider looking in. I'm not saying my little frustrations are anything in comparison to his, god even Lear would count his blessing to those of Jude, no, I can just relate to his earthly frustrations. He reminds me of a much worse off me. You?

[mortalterror]

Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. The character had an outlook on life which still rings true for me today. "Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons,... Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior."

After that I'd go with Oblomov from Goncharov's novel of the same name. He has a benign world weary laziness that is almost buddhist in it's simplicity. He's always planning things and putting them off, building castles in the air, sleeping 'till noon, and wandering his apartment in an old bathrobe. He is a funny and endearing gentleman.

Then I'd pick Falstaff, who has a sort of tragic, self-aware edge to his foolishness. He is base and noble at once. He loves life, loves wine, women, and song, and he knows how to have a good time. He is the most intelligent of Shakespeare's creations. Even when he is being funny, or playing the knave, his words have a sort of philosophic clarity and seriousness. No mere clown, he is a Master of Revels like Silenus, or Gargantua before him, and no one after. Falstaff is a symbol of humanity, the best and worst in us all. Ezra Pound might have been describing him when he said "Man is a skinfull of wine, but his soul is a whole full of God, and the song of all time blows through him."

All three of my favorite characters are misfits and oddballs, well meaning, but foolish, intelligent in their own way, but melancholy.

[weltanschauung]

raskolnikov, no doubt.

[Dr. Hill]

Raskolnikov as well. I actually get fevers very often from lyme disease!

[Dori]

Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov.

Why?

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=7108

[Joreads]

Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov.

Why?

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=7108

I love that Blog Dori.

[Redzeppelin]

It sounds pretentious and self-serving to say Hamlet, but I truly identify with his struggle with the personal nature of experience. When his mother asks him why he "seems" to be mourning inappropriately for his father, he responds with

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (I.i)

I identify with this stubborn insistance that nobody can really understand what another person is going through - that pain, especially, is so internal and so personal, that we really cannot understand or even empathize with what others go through and how they go through it.

Likewise, his struggle with wanting to act but being paralyzed with doubt - that to resonates with me.

Umm...and wordiness too, apparently...

[Dori]

Umm...and wordiness too, apparently...

I love that Blog Dori.

Ah, how I love praise!



I'm waiting for someone to say Smerdyakov...

[LitNetIsGreat]

After that I'd go with Oblomov from Goncharov's novel of the same name. He has a benign world weary laziness that is almost buddhist in it's simplicity. He's always planning things and putting them off, building castles in the air, sleeping 'till noon, and wandering his apartment in an old bathrobe. He is a funny and endearing gentleman.

I like the sound of him, I'll have to check this one out for sure.

[LitNetIsGreat]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oblomov-Clas...4431466&sr=1-3

Yes this sounds fantastic, do you know if this translation is any good?

[mortalterror]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oblomov-Clas...4431466&sr=1-3

Yes this sounds fantastic, do you know if this translation is any good?

I believe that's the translation I read it in. It was superb.

[amalia1985]

I'd say Jane Eyre, for her independent spirit, her refusal to be led by others, her attitude to remain true to her beliefs, unaffected by others' influence.

[PoeticPassions]

I think I would have to go with Harry Haller (Steppenwolf)... his constant search for something, his constant discontent... his wish to break from the bourgeoisie society, yet his inability to fully do so (for he is always entwined in it), his gloomy outlook on life, yet also some kind of intellectual superiority (that he feels he has, yet he has so much to learn); his loneliness, and his struggle between his "human" self and his "animalistic" (i.e. "wolf") self.

[Emil Miller]

A fictitious character that I have always identified with is that of Somerset Maugham's alter ego Ashenden. Worldly wise and urbane, he is always the casually inofenssive observer of the of the characters that people those books of Maugham that are told in the 'first person'.

[rozreads]

Even though I grew up in a rural area, when I was young I totally identified with Francie in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I just thought like her, I guess. But, from the moment I read Catch-22, it was Yossarian...surrounded by people who seem to understand the inanity and lost in the search for something that makes sense. Still, I think I keep a bit of Francie's idealism in the attic.