Who are your three favorite heroes/heroines in literature?

[Nanjing to Seoul]

For me, in order of #3 to #1 is simple:

#3: O-Lan (欧兰 from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. This is a woman who gives her spirit and soul to a soul dead man who only really cares about his own gratitude. She raises children that view her poorly and dies alone while her husband entertains his concubine. She is the essence of purity in my eyes. And what happens to purity in an impure world.

#2: Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I read the book long before watching the opera for the first time and the book really got to a man. Here is a man hunted and chased for a minor mistakes not only by the law, but by his own conscience for feeling he has never done enough to atone for his mistakes. Valjean has so little to dislike in a character or a hero that when he dies, you feel part of your heart die with him.

#1: Samwise Gamgee from JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings Triology. No other character shows true devotion and genuine caring for another as Samwise does for Frodo. Samwise is everything people should be to each other. And at the end, after years of taking care of Mr. Frodo, when he boards the white ship with Elrond, Bilbo and Gandalf, we feel and know that Samwise wants, one more time, to be the man to save and protect Frodo. As the ship leaves, Samwise feels part of himself leave with Frodo. Samwise Gamgee is probably the greatest heroic character in the history of literature.

[TBF]

1. This is a really good question -

I often think of favorite books but not necessarily characters.

I loved the Good Earth - such an interesting book because as you point out O-Lan was such an opposite of her husband.

The Handmaid's Tale - Offred
The Lovely Bones - Susie Salmon
Ethan Fromm - Ethan

[shenmue]

2. Will McLean, 'The Lords of Discipline'

By Pat Conroy.

[pscot]

3. Chronologically

Gilgamesh
Odysseus
Yossarian

[Fairgo]

4. The three amigos

Ignatius J. Riley
Kilgore Trout
Hari Seldon

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

5. My favorites

Miles Vorkosigan in Lois McMaster Bujold's series of novels. He is a the son and grandson of great men, and he feels he has to be a great man as well. He has to overcome serious physical handicaps (his mother was poisoned in an assassination attempt when she was pregnant, and the poison -- or, rather, the antidote to the poison -- has made his bones brittle and severely stunted his growth). He turns out to be a great man himself, although many of his achievements he can't tell anyone about, since he spends much of his career as a covert operations specialist for Imperial Security.

Victor Cachet in the Honor Harrington novels by David Weber. He is a man of honor and integrity. He is fully prepared to lose his own life to do what he believes is right.

Huckleberry Finn. He, too, is determined to do what is right, even if he might well "go to hell for it".

[FSogol]

6. My 3:

Eugene Henderson from "Henderson the Rain King" by Saul Bellow
Yossarian from "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller
Larry Darrell from W. Somerset Maugham's, "The Razor's Edge"

I also never tire of Holmes and Watson.