It's Halloween, with my daughters looking forward to getting dressed-up as their favorite characters from movies, television or anime: a good opportunity perhaps to reflect on some of the literary characters that have inspired each of us over the years.
My own youthful literary inspirations came from a variety of authors and backgrounds, but shared a few repeating themes.
My favorite authors when I was young included J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and Anne McCaffrey - but also included classical writers, such as H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Victor Hugo, and of course William Shakespeare. These were authors whose books I sought out - not necessarily those that I was assigned to read in some class. Authors that had a story that needed to be heard, or who could create characters that resonated larger than life.
Looking back across those years, I can still point to specific themes that each book or author conveyed, and individual characters that I can clearly remember to this day - not all of them necessarily the heroes.
The central theme that I believe makes a character great, boils down to their humanity. Good or bad, young or old, its our ability to see a part of ourselves, of people we know in them. The flaws, the imperfections, that make us struggle and strive, those are the things that we desperately need to relate to for a character to be memorable. They might be a hero from the Lord of the Rings, or the darkest villain from MacBeth, but it's our ability to see our own imperfections mirrored in their persona that makes that character relatable to us, in ways that continue to inspire or appall.
Happy Halloween everyone. If anyone would like to share some of their own literary heroes, I'd love to hear from them.
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