My All Time Favourite Literary Figures


Here goes friends, tagged once more and honored all the way! My all time favourite literary figures, in no particular order!


1.Prof. Higgins

Prof Higgins Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

Right from the word go when he challenges that he could ‘pass off that common little flower girl as a duchess in an ambassador’s garden party’, he oozes confidence laced with the British arrogance! Being a professor of phonetics, he considers himself the guardian angel of the ‘majestic British English’!

‘Hear them down in Soho square,
Dropping "h's" everywhere.
Speaking English anyway they like.
You sir, did you go to school?
Man Wadaya tike me for, a fool?
Henry No one taught him 'take' instead of 'tike!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?’

He picks her up with confidence, works on her language with ferocious commitment, meets his challenge and throws her out! Wow! That needs some guts! He has to swallow his pride before he admits to himself that he cares for her more than he’d like to, but not without a ‘damn’!

‘Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!
I've grown accustomed to her face.’
---------------------I fall in love with him over and over at these words!

I guess for me it’s having found my ‘all time lover’ , the English Language personified!



2.Eliza Dolittle

Eliza Doolittle Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

If Prof. Higgins is ruthless in his treatment of Eliza, she matches him, word for word in her castigation of his attitude. She comes as a common flower girl and emerges as a ‘lady’, and in the course of it all , falls in love with Higgins, only to find herself thrown out of his house! She doesn’t spare him when he comes in search of her to his mother’s house. She’s so poised and every bit the ‘lady’ he’s made out of her. I could nearly hug her when she tells him, ‘There'll be spring every year without you. England still will be here without you.
There'll be fruit on the tree.
And a shore by the sea.
There'll be crumpets and tea without you’.

She’s such a sweet and potential blend of fragility and strength, (oxymoron buddies) that I feel these are the essential components of all women! I’d love to be made this way too! And in my soliloquies, often find myself questioning, ‘are you like her’?

Of course, because of the visual impact, Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison fill my mind’s eye when we talk about these characters-------My Fair Lady, the silver screen version of the play!



3.Darcy

Darcy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Well Dags, if it’s Elizabeth for you, it’s Darcy for me! He’s introduced as one of the opinionated, snobbish ‘elite’! When his friend Bingley asks him to choose a dance partner, he says in a derisive tone, ---------------’your sisters are engaged; and there is not another woman in the room, whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with!’ The interaction between him and Elizabeth, their misunderstandings of each other, the journey of ‘love and hatred’, and the grand finale of their union are the highlights of the story.

The most obvious reason why he appeals to me is that he stands apart from a host of other characters in the novel. There are as many characters in the story as the number of mice in a grocery store; and yet, he manages to stand tall and be noticed! His pride, initially bordering on arrogance, later subdued by love, his good nature, helping tendency and his nobility are what endear him to the reader. I’ve always felt that had he been real and had I met him, I’d have professed undying love to him! Siggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh --------but I’m too practical to believe in fiction! Ha haaaaaaaaaaa

4.Harry

Harry Potter ------ Harry Potter series - J K Rowling

Well, you may be surprised at the number of children’s books/novels/classics I’ve listed here. That children’s books are to be read only by children is a myth. There are a lot of adult elements in most of these bestsellers. Harry Potter takes the cake for the mystique and imagination!

He’s your friendly boy next door and believes in coincidental luck as against the ‘all-powerful’ stereotypical heroes. His early loss of parents, his upbringing as the ‘unwanted’ intruder by his aunt’s family, his yearning for friends, his love and loyalty to his chosen mates, his commitment to his cause, his successes, failures, achievements, risks, fears, uncertainties, ups and downs--------------------make him endearing and you can’t hold your heart from reaching out to him in his moments of misery.

If a boy fitting descriptions shakes hands with me and says, ‘hi I’m Harry Potter’, I guess I’d take the hand without batting an eyelid, for Rowling’s touch has made him ‘real’, as real as you and I are!

5.Anne

Anne - Anne of Green Gables (a series) - L M Montgomery

One of the children’s classics in the likes of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, this has been one of my most favourite series. Anne, the main character is an awkward, red headed orphan, yearning for love. She steals into your heart when she answers anyone who asks her name, with such innocence and serious intent, ‘I’m Anne with an ‘e’’!

Throughout the series, she keeps making inroads into the reader’s heart, mind and soul with her simple and straight forward approach to life and people. I’ve picked up a great phrase of hers------’kindred spirit’-! Anne herself is, I’ve always felt, one of my kindred spirits!

‘--------------nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!’ It’s this stoicism of hers that expects the ‘bend in the road’ at any point of time in life, together with her unquestioning simple faith that says, ‘God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world’, that makes her soooooooooooo endearing. And I always take a leaf out of Anne’s book, when I come across that bend in the road! She inspires me!


6.Mark Antony

Mark Antony Julius Caesar - Shakespeare

Julius Caesar has been my all time favourite historic play. The intricacy of the plot, the depth of the characters, the choice of words, the flow of dialogues----------name it, and you’ve the best! Antony of course, is known for his ‘gift of the gab’; and my, what a ‘gift’!!! The power of oration has build empires and broken down empires; and Antony’s oration is famous for its convincing convictions. The ‘mass-has-no-mind’ concept is adeptly exploited by Antony through his excellent speech; the ease with which he turns the commoners around is amazing in its sheer power.

--------I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him-------------------are his opening words; and after that he does nothing but praise Caesar, interspersed with the refrain,
---------'and Brutus is an honorable man’!!! It takes a lot of convincing to win over people from the other side, and he does that in no time with relative ease, just  through words!

7.Puck

Puck or Robingoodfellow Midsummer Night’s Dream - Shakespeare

‘I am that merry wanderer of the night
I jest to Oberon and make him smile’----------

----------that’s Puck for you-----------merry, wandering, and the servile spirit of Oberon, the Fairy King. Oberon and Titinia (the King and Queen of Fairies) have a tiff over the ownership of a small boy. The play is intricately weaved around four couples. Puck is the sprightly fairy servant, who adds spice and life to the play and retains it throughout.

The dexterity with which he performs the tasks he has been set, his entry and exeunt at the most opportune moments, his love for mischief -----all these endear him to the readers--------definitely to me. ‘----I'll put a girdle round about the earth ---In forty minutes’----------------this speaks of his lightning speed that amuses me each time I read the play!


8.Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is one of the world’s greatest love stories, that portrays a homely, orphan governess, who wins the heart of Mr. Rochester, her apparently heartless employer. I love Jane for her clarity of thought, acceptance of life, her passion for conviction and above all, her devotion to love and to Mr. Rochester. After many a hurdle and separation, she gets married to him, a blind, a cripple, twenty years older than her. And this is what she says about their togetherness after ten years of being married to him:

Quote: ‘No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I’m; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of his society; he knows none of mine; any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once, as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. All my confidence is bestowed on him; all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result!’ Unquote

Do I have to elaborate further why she’s one of my all time favourites?


9.Fatty

Five Find Outers and Dog - Enid Blyton

Well, as the blog title says, ‘All time favourites’, I’ve included my childhood favourite too! I’ve always felt that Enid Blyton was one hell of a writer; no one to beat her to date. She’s an excellent story teller and I’ve observed that any child who reads her books develops a very good command over the language. Her specialty is to slip in the values of life along with the story rather than sound didactic. Fatty is one of her famous and sensational characters. He’s the hero of the series, ‘Five Find Outers and Dog’, a happy-go-lucky, naughty, clever, glib and charms-the-socks -off’ teenager. He plays the amateur sleuth to the ‘T’ with his amazing flair for disguises and ventriloquism. To say I’ve read the series more than once and enjoyed every page of it, is an understatement.



10.SIR

To Sir With Love - E R Braithwaite

‘SIR’ is the hero of the novel ‘To Sir With Love’, by E R Braithwaite. The book is a first person narrative, which makes the author the hero, a negro(the book says so in 1959; today’s political correctness would term him as an African American!) This memoir encapsulates the prejudices of racism. Rick Braithwaite, a South American by birth, and just out of the Air Force, finds himself  the teacher in a class of delinquents and social misfits. Armed with hard work and determination, he wins them over, slowly but surely and turns them around to young men and women of class. It is a ‘must read’ for all of us, and a ‘never to be missed’ for teachers.

The silver screen version is very appealing too, of course, with the usual bit of ‘tinkering’ that’s done on the original script. Here, the hero is Mark Thackeray, an engineer, played by Sidney Poitier who takes over the class. I’ve seen this movie a dozen times, and each time, cried shamelessly in the last scene; you would too, believe me, for it’s heart wrenching it its intensity!

These are not all, but by all means the best of the pick!!! Hope you enjoyed meeting my heroes!  










 

 

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