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Holden Caulfield — Holden is the troubled narrator of Catcher in the Rye. He fails out of four schools; he manifests complete apathy toward his future; he is hospitalized, and visited by a psychoanalyst, for an unspecified complaint; and he is unable to connect with other people.
The most noticeable of Holden's "peculiarities" is how extremely judgmental he is of almost everything and everybody. He criticizes and philosophizes about people who are boring, people who are insecure, and, above all, people who are "phony." |
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Fred — Scrooge's nephew in A Christmas Carol, is a genial man who loves Christmas. He invites Scrooge to his Christmas party each and every year, only to be refused by his grumpy uncle. |
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Mrs. Costello — Winterbourne's aunt in Henry James's short story "Daisy Miller." She has resided in Europe for many years and adopted the attitudes of European society. She also claims high status in New York City and refuses to socialize with those of lower status, like the Millers. |
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Gabriel Conroy — The main character in "The Dead," a short story in James Joyce's Dubliners. Gabriel is Gretta's husband, a mildly successful writer and teacher. After the jovial Christmas party at his aunts' house, Gabriel feels extremely drawn to Gretta. Greta hears the song "The Lass of Aughrim" and remembers the dead lover of her girlhood, Michael Furey, who used to sing the same song. Before Gretta left him to attend a convent school, Michael Furey snuck out to see her on a rainy night. The rain exacerbated his illness, and he died a week later. "I think he died for me," Gretta says of him. When Gabriel learns that she has been thinking of the young man, Michael Furey, with whom she used to be in love, he experiences an agonizing moment of shame followed by the realization that no human being can ever truly know another. |
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Aunt Pittypat Hamilton — In Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Melanie and Charles Hamilton's aunt, a flighty, old maid who faints from shock several times a day, and in whose house Scarlett lives for much of her time in Atlanta. |
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Fagin (the Jew) — A conniving career criminal in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other people's stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to commit them — and often suffer legal retribution — in his place. Dickens's portrait of Fagin seems to display the influence of anti-Semitism.. |
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Uncle Tom — A good and pious man of Uncle Tom's Cabin . Even under the worst conditions, Uncle Tom always prays to God and finds a way to keep his faith. As the novel progresses, the cruel treatment that Tom suffers at the hands of Simon Legree threatens his belief in God, but Tom withstands his doubts and dies the death of a Christian martyr. |
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Sancho Panza — The simple peasant who follows Don Quixote in Cervantes' novel out of greed, curiosity, and loyalty. Sancho is the novel's only character to exist both inside and outside of Don Quixote's mad world. Other characters play along with and exploit Don Quixote's madness, but Sancho often lives in and adores it, sometimes getting caught up in the madness entirely. On the other hand, he often berates Don Quixote for his reliance on fantasy; in this sense, he is a contrast to Don Quixote. Whereas Don Quixote is too serious for his own good, Sancho has a quick sense of humor. Whereas Don Quixote pays lip service to a woman he has never even seen, Sancho truly loves his wife, Teresa. While Don Quixote deceives himself and others, Sancho lies only when it suits him. |
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