Category Famous Characters from World Literature

In the olden days, adventure and chivalry were two things that were celebrated in Europe. No wonder, Don Quixote, a novel by Miguel de Cervantes was one of the most widely read novels in the western world. This Spanish novel is a saga of Alonso Quixano, a noble from La Mancha who loses his mind as a result of reading too many chivalric romances. He decides to become a knight-errant to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote of La Mancha.

Don Quixote employs Sancho Panza, a farmer as his squire. Sancho Panza possesses a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote’s rhetorical monologues on knighthood. The ideas that Don Quixote holds onto were already considered old-fashioned at that time. He does not see the world for what it is and chooses to imagine his life as a knightly story of chivalric quest instead.

Don Quixote was an instant success and the readers found it comic; it is considered to be the prototype of the modern novel.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a true masterpiece of terror and tells of one of the most famous monstrous creatures in European literature. It began as a fireside ghost story and grew into a worldwide phenomenon.

The name Frankenstein is popularly attached to the creature itself. Don’t be surprised to know that Mary Shelley drew upon her nightmares to come up with this spine-chilling story.

Frankenstein is the story of a Swiss scientist, Victor Frankenstein who is fascinated about the latest advances in science.

He resolves to pioneer a new way to explore unknown powers, and unfold the deepest mysteries of creation. At the end of a lot of mysterious experiments, he manages to create a body that comes to life.

What Frankenstein created turns out to be a monster. In a chain of tragic events, his creation destroys everything that he loves. With nothing left to live for but revenge, Frankenstein dedicates himself to destroying the monster.

A daring scientist, he goes to the Arctic Circle in search of his monstrous creation. Unfortunately, he falls into the freezing water and contracts pneumonia. The novel ends with the death of Victor Frankenstein.

The monster he created is overcome by grief and pledges to incinerate himself at ‘the Northernmost extremity of the globe’. He then departs, never to be seen again.

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Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky raised a lot of literary discussions. The novel presents a nineteen-year-old as the hero in the very beginning. Alyosha Karamazov is the youngest of the Karamazov brothers and he is the hero that we are talking about.

Alyosha is an immensely likeable young boy. It is believed that Dostoyevsky based the character sketch of Alyosha on his friend Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian philosopher and poet who led a generous life, even giving away his clothes to people in the street.

Alyosha is a novice in the local Russian Orthodox monastery. Quiet contrary to his faith, his brother Ivan is an atheist. Alyosha gets engaged to a young girl named Liza Khokhlakov. Liza sinks into depression and self-hatred later and ends up rejecting Alyosha.

Alyosha’s place in the novel is that of a messenger or witness to the actions of his brothers and others. His involvement with a group of school boys adds a hopeful message to an otherwise tragic novel.

The novel began to be celebrated right after its publication. In fact, Dostoyevsky wanted to come up with a sequel about Alyosha’s life, but unfortunately, he died shortly after the publication of Brothers Karamazov.

Ivan Turgenev chronicles the philosophies and actions of Yevgeny Bazarov, a young physician, in his novel Fathers and Sons. Bazarov does not believe in anything but science; he is rude, sarcastic and strident at work. He calls himself a nihilist and rejects all traditional institutions and forms of authority.

The novel begins with Arkady Kirsanov who has just graduated from the University of Petersburg returning to his father’s modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. He has a friend with him, Bazarov. Though his father welcomes both of them, Arkady’s brother soon gets disturbed by Bazarov’s philosophy of nihilism. Nihilism says that life is meaningless; this philosophy rejects all religious and moral principles. The novel ends with Bazarov’s death.

Fathers and Sons talks about the inevitable conflict between generations, and between the values of traditionalists and intellectuals. It created a lot of controversy when it was published.

Have you heard of the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky? This novel features Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a poor student and it is often regarded as Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece.

Raskolnikov is a young student living in extreme poverty in Saint Petersburg, who cannot even afford to pay the rent of the tiny garret that he lives in. He sleeps on a couch using old clothes as a pillow, and eats very rarely.

He is devoted to his mother and sister. Though he is handsome and intelligent -two qualities that attract people in college, he is disliked by many of his peers. The novel is a psychological analysis of this miserable hero.

In a turn of events, he murders a pawnbroker from St. Petersburg. This incident shakes our hero; Raskolnikov is hit by a tremendous wave of nightmarish guilt.

The story is told in a feverish, compelling tone which follows the twists and turns of Raskolnikov’s emotions; it elaborates his struggle with his conscience and his mounting sense of horror as he wanders the city’s hot, crowded streets. In the end, Raskolnikov realizes that happiness cannot be attained by a reasoned plan of existence, but must be earned by suffering.

Through Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky portrays the struggle of living each day, trying to figure out the meaning of one’s existence. This novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

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Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, another trend-setting Russian author. It is about Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, whose life is marked by two prominent events-the Russian Revolution and the First World War.

The novel captures the journey of Yuri Zhivago, the son of a wealthy man who eventually becomes addicted to alcohol and later takes his own life. After his mother’s death Yuri was cared for by his uncle Kolya. He becomes a doctor and a writer and serves in World War I. He marries Tonya and they have two children, but he falls in love with Lara while working in a military hospital.

It talks about the effects of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath on a bourgeois family.

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