Category Famous Characters from World Literature

The Count of Monte Cristo is Alexander Dumas’s most popular work and is celebrated as a classic. The novel is set in the time of the Bourbon Restoration, a time when Napoleon I abdicated was abdicated and the Bourbon monarchs were restored to the throne in France. Like many of his books, this novel is expanded from the plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.

The Count of Monte Cristo talks about Edmond Dantes, an innocent man who is unjustly held in prison, and later manages to escape and takes revenge. Undoubtedly, Edmond Dantes is the protagonist of this much-loved novel. In the beginning, he is portrayed as an honest and loving man. His character undergoes a complete shift after he is framed for a crime which he did not commit; he turns bitter and vengeful. When he is free and enormously wealthy, he takes it upon himself to reward those who have helped him in his plight and punish those who were responsible for his years of suffering.

 

During the year 1866, ships of various nationalities sight a mysterious sea monster. The US government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A World Tour Underwater is about finding this monster.

There were many myths and stories about sea giants and sea monsters. Apart from adventure, the novel also talked about science. It was an adventurous science fiction story.

Pierre Aronnax, a famous marine biologist joins the expedition that lasts for five months, ending near the coast of Japan. There, their ship locates the monster and it damages the ship’s rudder. To the crew’s amazement, the monster turns out to be a futuristic submarine; they’re captured, hauled inside, and introduced to the submarine’s mysterious manufacturer and commander, Captain Nemo. Captain Nemo seems to have a dual motivation: a quest for scientific knowledge and a desire to take revenge on terrestrial civilization.

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Many of you might have grown up listening to the adventurous travels of Gulliver. Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world. He is the protagonist of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

The novel is in four parts, each describing one of Gulliver’s adventures. Gulliver visits Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and the land of Houyhnhnms. While Lilliput is the land of tiny people who are not more than fifteen centimetres tall, Brobdingnag is the land of giants. Laputa is a flying island; with one eye pointing inward and the other outward, the people of Laputa are so lost in thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them.

In the fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses who are cleaner, more rational, communal, and benevolent. After meeting these horses, he ends up with a feeling of disgust towards humans.

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Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables presents a vast panorama of Parisian society and its under-world. The novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love.

Jean Valjean is the protagonist of the novel. He spends long nineteen years in prison with fearsome prison hulks. After being released, Valjean starts a new life under the name Monsieur Madeleine but his hardships do not leave him. He is haunted by his criminal past time and again.

To add fuel to the fire, Valjean’s former jailer Javert identifies him, setting the stage for an epic game of cat-and mouse. Valjean eventually gives himself up for the sake of his adopted daughter, Cosette, and her husband, Marius.

Pride and Prejudice is one of Jane Austen’s most celebrated novels. It is about the Bennet family and the complex relationships that they share with each other.

The Bennets belong to a society where marriage is the only possible future for a young girl of good family.

The Bennet family has five daughters- Elizabeth, Jane, Catherine, Lydia and Mary. Elizabeth and Jane are well-mannered. Mary is less physically attractive and holds onto intellectual and musical pretensions while Catherine and Lydia are both left almost abandoned to run wild under the careless supervision of their mother.

Elizabeth, the protagonist of the novel is much like her father; she is intelligent, high-spirited and shares her father’s distaste for the conventional views of society about the importance of wealth and rank. She is matched with the aristocratic hero Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Elizabeth and Darcy share a turbulent relationship in the beginning. She initially mistakes his pride for arrogance, but later changes her opinion and falls in love with him. The romantic novel ends with a happy note with all the Bennet sisters getting married.

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813.

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When Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Daniel Defoe was first published, many people believed that Robinson Crusoe was a real person, and the book, a travelogue of true incidents. The book is told in an autobiographical tone.

Though we do not know if there was someone named Robinson Crusoe for real, the story is believed to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island.

Robinson Crusoe is a headstrong young man who ignores his family’s advice and leaves his comfortable middle-class home in England to go to sea.

Though his initial experiences at the sea are not so favourable, his perseverance makes him a successful merchant.

During one of his voyages, he encounters a storm in the Caribbean, and his ship is nearly destroyed. He survives the shipwreck and spends almost three decades on a remote island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad.

Crusoe departs from the island with Friday, his trusted servant. He goes to England with a group of pirates.

Though he leads a settled life for a while after selling his plantation in Brazil, he is never able to resist his temptation to go back to the island.

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