“The 100 Greatest Literary Characters” by James Plath, Gail Sinclair, and Kirk Curnutt

The first thing that makes a reader read a book is the characters. That was John Gardner. If the characters come alive, the novel comes alive. That’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Given the importance of characters, James Plath, an English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Gail Sinclair, the executive director of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., and Kirk Curnutt, an English professor at Troy University in Troy, Ala., set about to identify the 100 greatest characters in literature.

Such a daunting task required setting up some rules. One of those was that the authors decided against picking multiple characters from a single novel. So Mark Twain’s Jim didn’t make the list while Huck Finn did. Sherlock Holmes got the nod. Dr. Watson didn’t. Frankenstein’s monster made the list over his creator.

On a separate list included in the book, each author listed 10 characters they deemed especially great. Plath listed the following: Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter), Jay Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Dracula, Ebenezer Scrooge, James Bond, and Jane Eyre.

“I gravitated towards unique, richly imagined characters that have been embraced by pop culture in substantial or significant ways and are known by people who haven’t read the novels,” said Plath.

Don Quixote is revered around the world, while tourists make a pilgrimage to 221B Baker Street in London to see where Sherlock Holmes hung his deerstalker. Hester Prynne was the perfect example of society’s double standard, said Plath. “It takes two people to have an affair, but only one is held accountable (the woman),” he said.

Jay Gatsby came alive on Broadway recently, said Plath, while many knew the Alice in Wonderland story and characters, but few have probably read the Lewis Carroll work, he said.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, got people reading again and now has his own theme park, noted Plath. Dracula’s storied fame has been broadened by the many films that have followed, something that has also heightened the character of James Bond, he said.

Plath said he retained the Bond paperbacks he read as a kid and recently reread them, noticing that Ian Fleming’s 007 novels tend to be less detailed than the movies that have carried the franchise forward. “In the novels, Bond can be almost cruel at times,” he said.

Ebenezer Scrooge represents the bad character who is transformed, while Jane Eyre may be the all-time romantic favorite, he said.

Plath, who’s taught at Illinois Wesleyan since 1988, has taught American literature, journalism, creative writing, and film. He’s written several volumes of poetry and serves as president of the John Updike Society. Among the books he’s written are Conversations with John Updike (1994), Remembering Ernest Hemingway (1999), and John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews (2016).