Action Figures in Literature

[Carol]

potioncat wrote:
>
> Boy, the discussion about Harry as Christ figure really heated up the boards! And what a season for it!
> 
> I know there are names for different plot types along with conventions and traditions on how those plots are expected to play out. I know what a Christ figure is. In fact, discussions about what type of story HP was and whether he was a Christ figure were used to predict the outcome of the series.
> 
> So all this got me wondering, are there other figure types? Wouldn't a hero who leads his people to a better place be a Moses figure? (Watership Down)
> 
> Are there names for the different hero or character types?
> 
> Potioncat
>
Carol responds:

Interesting question! There are stock characters in literature and drama--say, misers and bullies and braggarts--but they're always minor characters, not heroes. There are epic heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, antiheroes like Sidney Carton, Byronic heroes like Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" (some people may not distinguish between antiheroes and Byronic/Satanic heroes; probably the second is a variant of the first), romantic heroes like Fitzwilliam Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice," reluctant heroes like Frodo, and tragic heroes like Oedipus or Hamlet (or even Willie Loman) who bring about their own downfall through a fatal flaw. These days, I suppose we should include superheroes as a category though they're probably a variation on the epic hero. If there's a special term for the child hero who grows to manhood in a Bildungsroman, I can't remember it, but Harry would fall into that category, as would Huckleberry Finn and David Copperfield. (Maybe we'd just call him the protagonist!)

I *have* seen "Moses figure" used to describe a certain type of hero, but I can't think of an example offhand. (Quite possibly, there are David, Abraham, and Joseph figures, too, at least in older European literature in which the author can assume familiarity with the Bible.)

Carol, who suspects that she's forgetting something obvious here