Have you ever fallen in love - furiously, deeply, and passionately...with a book character? If you say Edward Cullen, stop reading IMMEDIATELY and go pick up Catch 22, Don Quixote, The World According to Garp, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or even a Sherlock Holmes story if you need something a little shorter and more two-dimensional to start off with. I'm not going to lie: in real life you might dislike and disrespect Yossarian or T.S. Garp. Some of the protagonists here are arrogant and distant, many are arguably insane, and others cheat on the women they claim to love.
And yet...
There's something noble, passionate and beautifully truthful about each of them. They all have an intoxicating zest for life and find unique ways of living it to the fullest. But they'll be something different for you than they were for me, and that's the beauty of it. Unlike movie men, often gorgeous but underdeveloped and rigid in their roles, we can see literary characters with our own eyes. Between the printed lines, our minds morph them into something new. Ultimately, we infuse ourselves into them and they become a sound reality in fictitious skin: the perfect man.
4 comments:
i always like to believe that seymour glass wouldn't have killed himself if he'd married me instead.
I always felt that McMurphy from "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" did the only sane thing in the world he lived in. He is described as having no choice in the matter when he makes his final great move. The choice was his, but he couldn't have acted otherwise and felt able to look himself in a mirror. In the end he acted for many reasons. The pissing contest with Nurse Ratchett forced McMurphy to take the ultimate action to win. But most of all, he felt driven by the very souls he helped so much. McMurphy was a bad man, make no mistake. The life he led in many respects was truely evil. The demand made of his soul in the end is what really pushed him. That push, that demand on his very essence is what made him perfect in my eyes. He resented it, he hated the men for it. But McMurphy acted anyway. He knew that he would die, that slowly he would perish. But he stopped caring about his life to care about who he wanted to be. He looked into the void and the void blinked. In that moment he moved mountains! Letting go of ones' self and becoming what others need is brave and painful. This is why in my eye's, McMurphy will always be a perfect character.
http://bamfucker.blogspot.com/
I read Great Expectations and fell in love with Pip. His character was so full of good and I saw a little bit of myself in him. Not rich, but ambitious and hard working.
I used to wish I was born in the 1700s because of authors like Dickens.
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