₦airaland Forum

RaggedyAnn:
People take different things away from reading novels - a good story, life philosophies, or even role models. If you're like me, you immerse yourself so deeply in a book that the ending seems like the end of the world, and leaves you a little depressed for a while. The characters seem like people you know really well, and care about. And some of them leave a lasting impression, they stay with you for a long time.

Who are the most memorable characters you've met in books and why were they impressive?




Some of mine are:

1. Ruth Mason Douglass, (These Latter Days, by Laura Kalpakian):
Even though it was only the nineteenth century, she was a woman who challenged the boundaries of the box she was put in. Maybe not as radically as her daughter Eden, who died tragically in a train wreck as she pursued her dream. I love this book (thinking about it now)! I read it so many years ago. It spans several generations, and Ruth is the the Matriarch. I sense there's going to be a pattern.


2. Kate Blackwell, (Master of the Game, by Sydney Sheldon)
Also Matriarch of her family and head of Kruger-Brent Ltd. I love her for her strength and badassness.

3. Maryann Flood, (79 Park Avenue, by Harold Robbins)
This book consists of this memorable character and my favorite genre - legal drama. Maryann Flood aka Marja Fludjinski is a tough girl who over comes sexual abuse by her step-dad (with her mother's approval), and subsequent life on the streets to build her empire. An escort business. Of course, she gets in trouble with the law, and while she's on trial, the prosecutor falls in love with her. Another strong female type.


4. Madame Bovary, (Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert)
I do not see Madame Bovary as a feminist model, but the character is very sympathetic. Like Ruth Mason Douglass, Madam Bovary is not satisfied with the options inside the proverbial box. She reads a lot of books and lives vicariously through them. She's a restless romantic soul who marries a doctor with the hope that he would open up her world. But he is a boring man, and she quickly gets bored with him. She starts a scandalous affair, hates herself for it and blames the doctor for everything. In the end she kills herself. Tragic. And shocking for the time in which the book was written.

5. Howard Roarke, (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand)
A man of fierce integrity, who did not compromise his personal values for anything, even when he was piss poor. He won the world over in the end, and they learned to value him (his architecture). This is a philosophical novel, and it propagates the virtue of selfishness, and individualism against collectivism.

6. Lucky Santangelo, (created by Jackie Collins)
In a word: Lady Boss. And that's why I love her. But she also features in Chances, Lucky, and a host of others. She's a Mafia princess who's beautiful, smart and very glam.

7. Ifemelu, (Americanah, by Chimamanda Adichie)
I find Ifemelu very relatable and progressive. I like that she does not conform to typical standards and follows her heart in the end.

8. Dagny Taggart, (Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand)
Another uncompromisingly principled creation of the author. She propagates capitalist theories in the naturally uneven playing field.

9. Okonkwo, (Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe)
Principled character. Disgusted by his lazy father, he becomes the exact opposite. Hard worker, Quick tempered, traditionalist. Resists the change the white man brings. But kills himself in the end.

10. Hamlet, (Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)
Yes, I know this is a play but still. Hamlet is melancholic and asks the ultimate question: to be or not to be. Whether it's more dignified to live in suffering or to end that suffering by killing one's self. The whole soliloquy is awesome. And I relate to Hamlet.


You detest male characters?