Most Iconic Characters of Fiction

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

Okay, my literary pals: Name me your top 5 or 10 iconic characters of fiction. They can be your favorites, or just whichever ones you think fit the bill the best. Key word, "iconic".

 

Try to stick to literary characters. I know films and television and comic books are all fiction, but I'm looking for characters from books here. If you have to, you can list a duo if they are absolutely key to one another. My top 10:

 

Lenny Smalls - Of Mice And Men

Miss Havisham - Great Expectations

The Duke & The King - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Finny - A Separate Peace

Kat - All Quiet On The Western Front

Scout Finch - To Kill A Mockingbird

Nick Adams - Various Hemingway Shorts

Holden Caulfield - Catcher In The Rye

The Mad Priest - The Count Of Monte Cristo

Simon - Lord Of The Flies

[Clyde]

Boo Radley

Sherlock Holmes

[Habib]

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov - Crime and Punishment

[UKMustangFan]

Tow Sawyer

The Three Muskateers

[UKMustangFan]

Pony Boy - The Outsiders

[Habib]

Obvious one:

 

Don Quixote - Don Quixote

 

Not sure if this lives up to "iconic," but it could be in the argument:

 

The Judge - Blood Meridian

[MJAlltheWay24]

Aslan - Chronicles of Narnia but specifically Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe

[Hearsay]

Good heavens, what a task. One could go on for hours. A few that popped into my head: Long John Silver; Ebenezer Scrooge; Huckleberry Finn; Asland; Frodo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey; Madame Defarge.

[Habib]

Another:

 

Kurtz - Heart of Darkness

[Getslow]

Falstaff - Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 (Characters ranging from Dickens heroes to Shaggy from Scooby Doo are based on this guy. There aren't many more influential characters in all of Western literature, pretty remarkable considering he was a drunk and a coward.)

 

Gandalf - The Lord of the Rings (I could drone endlessly on about the various interesting characters from LOTR but Gandalf probably best fits the mold of "iconic.")

 

Nick Adams - In Our Time and various other stories (My favorite Hemingway character; went back and forth between him and Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea.)

 

Jay Gatsby - The Great Gatsby (Great character from one of what I feel are two books that could legitimately claim the title "The Great American Novel," the other being The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.)

[Getslow]

Good heavens, what a task. One could go on for hours. ...Ebenezer Scrooge...

 

I had to think for a long time about Dickens. So many great characters I didn't know where to start: Charles Darnay, Miss Havisham, Oliver Twist... it just goes on and on...

[Randy Parker]

Us, of course...

 

[marvel]

Severus Snape- Harry Potter

 

Clifford The Big Red Dog

[hrcarrier]

Rocky Balboa.

[ThrillVille Cardinal51]

This requires some serious thought. Off the top of my head I have to pick Harry.