Sometimes when you read a novel, a character sticks out in your mind as something special. There’s just something about a character that grabs your imagination. They have that something that holds your attention.
I can’t remember the novel, but one person who grabbed my imagination was the Fix It man. He advertised himself as the Fix It man, but he didn’t repair appliances. He fixed problems for you. Someone’s stalking you and nobody can help? Call the Fix It man. Someone breaking into your house? He took care of that by rigging a trap. He was unique because he’d surrendered his social security number in order to go unnoticed by society. Such a nonconformist that after seeing “unsafe at any speed” he bought a chevy corvair.
Next of course was Harry Callahan. A detective trapped by a system that didn’t work, and doing his best to try to make it work. A tragic figure, Callahan was motivated by doing what was right, no matter what. Callahan suffered from anger issues after his wife was killied by a drunk driver. Elements of his character pop up in a lot of my protagonists.
Three Days of the Condor features what is the prototype for my favorite characters – a reader hired by the CIA to read fiction books and write reports on what he read. Except he’d read so many thrillers and action novels, he was an unpredictable one man army, pitted against professional hired killers. Over 72 hours, he manages to elude capture, uncovers a shadow government plot, and stops the man who ordered the killings.
Man on Fire. My father read this and passed it to me. Creasy was a french foreign legionnaire tired of war and killing, so he goes to visit a friend from the legion. Creasy ends up hired as a bodyguard for a child during the 1970’s era of mob kidnappings, but the child is killed. And now the mob finds themselves pitted against the most ruthless opponent they’ve ever faced. Sadly, they’ve never made a movie of this. There’s been two movies with the same plots, characters and names, but alas – never been made into a movie. Kind of like Starship Troopers.
The Lord of the Rings. Seriously, can you think of any more intense characters? Every last one of them could have been the protagonists for their own novels – and here was all nine of them together! Who’s my favorite? I really couldn’t have given you a favorite. It changed with each reading of the book.
Dune. Paul Atreides is without a doubt the most intense protagonist I’ve ever read. The first book of Dune was incredibly imaginative. Sadly, the rest of the series failed to live up to the power of the first book.
Who’s your favorite protagonist and why? What is it about them that made them stick with you?
