Words At Large

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte’s great 19th-century heroine is a do-it-yourself individual who rises from the ashes of her meagre, miserable life to become the mistress of a great estate. She is a Disney movie waiting to happen, a true-to-life Cinderella.

Odysseus
Odysseus, from Homer’s The Odyssey, is remarkable for the amount of punishment he takes. He’s willing to reduce himself to absolute zero in order to survive. He is like the watch in the old Timex commercial—‘he takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.’ And he learns a great deal along the way, proving that experience is a harsh but thorough school.

Caedmon
Who? He was the first English poet. A stable hand at the Abbey of Whitby, on the cold northeast coast of England, he turns into a literary savant one night when he is touched by an angel and sets the entire Bible into Old English poetry. If you don’t like English literature, blame Caedmon. He started it.

Dante the character and Dante the man from The Divine Comedy
Cast out of his city, penniless, with nowhere to go, he reinvents himself through the process of pursuing and understanding God, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the individual is someone who gains mastery over himself. He’s a walking self-help book and a true winner.

Oedipus from Sophocles’ Theban Plays
No one could make more of a mess of his life than Oedipus, although many have tried. He would make for a week of Jerry Springer shows or Dr. Phil episodes. He kills his father, marries his mother, suffers serious self-abuse, pays no attention to himself and gives fuel to Sigmund Freud’s theories of naughtiness. He’s so dignified throughout most of it all that he gives suffering a bad name.

Hamlet
On the topic of moping and dead parents, Hamlet makes a spectacle out of himself for almost four hours on the stage just by thinking out loud. He’s a philosopher without an audience, which is like a comic without a punch line. But along the way he explores the nature of man, and this is what makes him so interesting to watch. He asks questions no one is capable of answering.

Richard III
You’ve got to love someone who is that horrible. He is your worst nightmare—the school yard bully, the mischievous college prankster who gets away with murder (really), the friend who betrays you in a business deal, and the guy who panics when he knows the jig is up. He’s part snake, part wimp and has absolutely no redeeming qualities. He should run for public office. He’d do well in these times.

Lily Briscoe from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
Lily is like that houseplant you want to keep around long after it has wilted because it is so familiar and shows the presence of life where there really shouldn’t be any. She contains the world and puts it in order as best as she can. She’s an artist. Have her for tea sometime—she’d like that.

Jesus from the Four Gospels
He’s not just the only hero in the catalogue to beat death; he is a genuine revolutionary with great ideas that border on passive aggression. A creative problem solver, he gives great credence to Freud’s claim that we’d blow ourselves up eventually if it weren’t for our superegos. In fact, you could say Jesus is the master of the superego. Can you snatch the mustard seed from his hand?

God from The Bible
No character in literature has such a record of durability. The Bible is the story of mankind’s relation to the Almighty. The human characters come and go, but God remains. A great creative thinker, he eventually becomes both judge and jury for mankind, writing laws and eventually building houses with many rooms. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time, he is the ultimate inspiration for goodness and a high ideal to emulate. What’s more, he’s very forgiving, likes to appear as pillars of fire or flaming shrubs, and makes rainbows. You have to love him. No, really, you have to.