When reading a novel (not a journal) do you prefer a likable protagonist? I've read a lot of writing books that have said this is a must and have heard a lot of readers claim the same thing. But when I think of some of the most memorable characters in literature-- take Scrooge as an example-- I find the ones that interest me most are unlikable, at least at first, and slowly grow more likable (sympathetic) over the course of the novel. So what about it? Will you read a book with a protag you don't like or will it get chucked across the room?

-- Anonymous, May 22, 2001

Answers

Not necessarily likeable, but sympathetic. There has to be some sort of touchpoint where I can relate to the character enough to understand why they're acting and reacting the way they are and maybe uncomfortably see a little bit of ourselves in them. Scrooge is a good example of that - he may be a nasty old man on the surface, but as the ghosts take him on a tour of his life, you start to see the little innocous things (things that maybe strike you as familiar to your own life) that have led to him getting to where he is, and by the time he gets to a place where he wants to change you cheer right with him when he finds out it's not too late. If there wasn't some sort of sympathetic feeling for him by that point, we'd be more inclined to cheer the idea of his dying alone and unloved.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I think it's harder to make a good character who isn't likeable on some level, and I think unlikeable characters will always have a more narrow appeal. But for me, the biggest issue is the author's skill and self-awareness. If you think your character is a noble hero, and I think she's a self-righteous prig, there will probably be some book-chucking. By the same token, if I think you don't give your villains or lesser characters a fair shake, I'm going to be annoyed at my time investment.

John Grisham is the author who immediately comes to mind here. I really hated the lawyer who was the main character in A Time to Kill. It was obvious that the author didn't share my dislike, and when I found out that Grisham had based that character on himself, I understood. But that wasn't a case of a good writer trying to center his novel around a complex or unlikeable character; I think it was a case of a person not recognizing his own obnoxiousness. If you want to read that sort of thing, there are five thousand online journals to choose from, and they're free!

Edited for illiteracy. Need more coffee.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I just started listening to Babbitt this morning. My walk to work is supposed to be invigorating, but this man spikes my blood pressure in all kinds of unpleasant ways and if I were reading instead of listening I'd chuck the book (and pick it up). Lewis is using Babbitt to Illustrate a Point, and so I doubt my enjoyment or sympathy will increase: books whose Agendas glare, when authors can't handle the agendas skillfully or when plots and characters are weaker than the agendas.

On the other hand, one of the few Naturalist books I like is Norris's McTeague, whose title character is called stupid more often than any other protagonist in literature-- once or more per page. It's a great book (the silent film "Greed" was based on it) even though McTeague is a lumbering ass, his wife Trina a simple grasping wisp of a girl, and the other main male character equally despicable. (Beth, I bet you'd hate it.)

Lots of antagonists are the more memorable characters--the only reason anyone knows the narrator in Moby-Dick is the book's first line, though his name isn't really Ishmael. But everyone remembers Captain Ahab.

Or take Oliver Twist. I am supposed to sympathize with him, but never do (maybe the musical poisoned me?); I like Fagin and Artful. And your specific example, Jim--you grow to like Scrooge but in fact the contemporary reader knows that that is what Dickens intends to happen; however, *this* contemporary reader doesn't like Tiny Tim because of the high Smarm factor.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

It doesn't have to be the main character, but if there's nobody in a novel or movie who seems sympathetic, I'll ... well, I usually won't chuck the book or walk out of the movie, but I'll complain about it in "Media You Hated" threads. For years and years afterwards.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

A Time to Kill. It's been years since I read it, Beth, but I seem to remember that Grisham really pushed the envelope with that one. Starting with that rape scene of the little girl. I'm about as hardcore a reader as you're likely to find, willing to read on any subect, from incest to bestiality to child murder, but that scene got to me. I had a hard time getting by it and onto the rest of the book. Same with "The Accused." That Jodie Forster rape scene. I think unlikable, graphic scenes bother me more than unsympathetic characters. They can stop me cold.

(I seem to recall that A Time to Kill, though it was the first novel Grisham wrote, wasn't published until he was a regular on the bestseller lists. Which just goes to show how arbitrary publication can be and how hypocritical editors can be when there are large sums of money involved.)

Maybe Scrooge wasn't the best example-- though he certainly is an example of a certain kind of unlikable character. I'm thinking now, however, of the characters of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. And, maybe, the characters of Patricia Highsmith. All unlikable, most from beginning to end. Like that guy from "The Postman Always Rings Twice." I hated that guy and that woman, thanks in no small part to their calling her Greek husband "that dirty greaser" a thousand times by page 4. As you know, they go on to kill the dirty greaser. But Cain gives me the satisfaction of seeing them get their just desserts. So for me I guess I can stand to have a protag be unlikeable beginning to end. I just want him to pay for it by the end of the book. Same with MacBeth. He and Lady Mac are a couple of real heels. But I'm compelled to read along, just to see them unravel.

Of course, Tom Ripley doesn't really unravel, does he? Yet it's still good stuff. Well, I got to tell you, I just don't know what in the hell.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

You know, maybe it's just not a simple formula. Readers will react differently to different characters just as they will to actual people. Tom Ripley to me is an example of an unlikeable character who doesn't work for *me* -- although I think she does a good job with the character; he just annoys the shit out of me. Perhaps I should blame Matt Damon for infecting my memory.

I like James Cain for the opposite reason that I dislike Grisham -- although his characters are unlikeable, he knows they are, and so he's successful in what he's trying to do. I find most of Grisham's characters to be unlikeable, but that's not what he's trying to do.

It probably comes down to James Cain being a better writer.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

In an introduction to a reprint of one of Charles Willeford's paperback mysteries, Elmore Leonard said that he and Willeford had both discovered that slightly eccentric characters were more interesting to write about, more fun, and it was a challenge to get the reader to stick with you when the protagonist was a psycho killer. Jim Hall did this with minor characters, like the hit man with the fried chicken franchise day job, who killed on weekends.

Of course Willeford's hero in the Hoke Mosely books is a homicide detective, but in Cockfighter it's a guy who had taken a vow of silence.

In The Burnt Orange Heresy the narrator sets fire to a man's house and murders his girlfriend because she has gotten annoying.

The Shark-Infested Custard has some real winners in it.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I've never read Grisham because his genre doesn't appeal to me. And I *hated* what Cain I read. I wanted to like him, because my friend Dalton loves him; and he's supposed to have been a huge influence on Camus, of all people. But I didn't like Cain, partly because the three that I read--"Double Indemnity" and two others in a volume ever so accurately titled Three of a Kind--were all so indistinguishable from each other that I don't remember the plots or titles of the other two. And Mildred Pierce is so misogynistic- -including the allegedly strong title role--that I can't stand it. Though I haven't read it I've seen both movies of Postman, the Lana Turner one and the Jessica Lange one. Mostly I didn't like him because everyone is so needlessly hateful and Life is Pointless Yet Inescapable (which is why the recently finished Handful of Dust bothered me so). I can read books with depressing themes or hateful characters, but I have to approach them like homework.

I'm trying to think of books populated with unlikeable, unsympathetic characters that I enjoyed, and drawing a blank. Mostly a blank: I love Alice in Wonderland but I don't love Through the Looking Glass as much, because even though both have disagreeable characters--Alice says as much--Looking Glass is so dark. Or maybe I just don't know chess.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I like Cain, but not for his plots, just the way he puts the words together... The opening line of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" is my second favorite opening line for a book (right after Moby Dick, and there it's actually the second line that I like).

My favorite protagonists, though, are Dashiell Hammett's. Many of them are only marginally likable at first, and Hammett rarely gives you insight into what's going on in their heads (even when the story is first person). As the stories develop, you tend to discover that the characters have noble motivations, and they become more likable.

He worked this to an extreme in Red Harvest, where at one point, it appears that the narrator has murdered a woman - and even he doesn't know for sure.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I don't necessarily need to like a character---but I have to care what happens to them. I think that's the difference. If there's an unlikeable character who you want to get his just desserts, you're going to hang around. As I recall, I struggled through about half of the Hotel New Hampshire before I realized I really, truly didn't care what happened to any of the characters.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

Not "likeable" so much as realistic. Most real people have some likeable traits and some not so easy to like, and so long as the protagonist seems real, (along with the other characters), I can usually find enough of a touchpoint to identify with the lead character.

I guess to be more specific, I prefer those that are flawed in realistic ways. I don't tend to like "likeable" people, not the wholesome All-American kind anyway, unless they have some kind of a darker edge to them. I prefer the same in my fictional characters.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I think Scarlett O'Hara was one of the most irritating characters ever created. Only the occasional look at Rhett Butler made GWTW worth reading.

I think it's not likable or unlikable---I think it's whether they're changing or static. We like characters who change---like Soames Forsyte in the FORSYTE SAGA from a penny-pinching rapist to an old eccentric geezer who cares about his daughter, and nothing else on Earth.

Or a likable character turning totally rotten. (Like the oddly talented Mr. Ripley...)

The fascination is not in whether you like them or not. It's whether they change or not.

That's why, as much as I love it, series fiction---detective novels, etc.---tend to be second-rate literature, unless the author wakes up and lets their character change. That's why Lord Peter Wimsey is a greater literary creation than, say, Dr. Thorndke....because of the change his love for Harriet Vane wrought in him.

---Al of NOVA NOTES.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

To answer your question first, I'll read it as long as the protagonist is interesting and the more unlikable they are, the more fascinating they need to be for me to stay with them. Garden variety stupid or mean wouldn't cut it.

But as for what the writing books say about likable characters being a must, I think that's misleading. Look (for a movie example) at THE USUAL SUSPECTS -- there's an unlikable and ultimately untrustworthy narrator, not really a likable guy in that bunch, but they were interesting and flawed and so very human in the details, that even when some of them were getting what they really deserved, we still cared -- or at the least, were interested in what was happening to them.

I think another question to examine would be "what makes a character likable?" -- and Lynda and Michael (among others here) touched on that -- it's the human flaws, the failings, the dark underneath that we identify with. It's why stock villains who are all bad are a joke and good guys without a flaw are boring.

To take a recent movie example -- which isn't anything like "great literature" but will serve the purpose here, is BRIDGET JONES. Which, of course, is a total adaptation / modernization of Pride and Prejudice. In BJ (as in P&P), Mr. Darcy is hardly a likable character. He's obnoxious, proud, rude, and insensitive. But in the end of both, you want him to get the girl. In BJ, Daniel Cleaver is a total womanzier cad who lies, cheats, will very likely cheat more, and yet... we end up liking him, despite his flaws. Bridget drinks too much, smokes too much, says all the wrong, stupid things at the worst possible time, is clumsy, isn't the most stylish thing around, whines a lot. But there are enough moments, deftly handled, that show the vulnerability, the need, the fears, the secret desires, the hopes -- that these people become real and likable, not in spite of their flaws, but because of them.

I think the trick isn't whether an author has made a character likable or not, but whether they've made the character fascinating and real. It's a balancing act. Good protags have flaws, good villains have virtues. It's their motives / actions that end up defining them and ultimately, make them worth the read to the end.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

As mentioned above, I think the real trick is what makes a character likeable. To a large degree, this seems to also be an idiosyncratic thing, more a matter of the person reading the book than the author.... For example, I love the book Ender's Game (by Orson Scott Card0 - love it, love it, love it. If I could only have one novel with me on a desert island, I would probably take that one. But my husband hates it, hates it, hates it, hates it. I think the characters in the book are extremely likeable, and find the book likewise compelling. He thinks the protagonist is 'far too whiny' and thus can't bring himself to care about what happens. What he sees as whiny, I see as 'the book being honest about the character's interior dialogue'. It's the *exact same* book though. So I guess the best you can do is to be clear about your intentions for the characters (be they likeable or un) and hope that your opinions of people are similar enough to enough readers' to gain at least some appreciation for what you were trying to do.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2001

I think it was Michael who said that he wanted realistic characters, and that fits my gut reaction, which is that I want believable characters. I don't care if Holden Caufield is unreliable because I believe that he is genuine and confused and scared and being unreliable is part of his character.

I could not finish WHITE OLDEANDER because, even though I like the little girl telling the story, I could not believe that she would use that poetic, luxurious, meandering voice. I wanted to like it, I wanted to finish the book, but I just couldn't do it.

I'll probably think about this some more, but my gut says I have to believe a character before I like a character.

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2001

Well, if it's very clear that a character is unlikable because of the skill and subtlety of the author, I love an unlikeable protagonist. But nothing's worse than a character you want to throttle the author can't manage to cobble together a realistic personality.

An unrealistic, less sympathetic main character has always seemed to make a book far more fascinating, for me, both as a reader, and someone reading with a writer's eye. Darker, more realistic, less heavy-handed, in a lot of cases, too.

But, of course, not always. Sometimes you don't want to kick Sam Spade's ass, or want to slap every character in The Sound and The Fury. Sometimes you just want to read about Anne of Green Gables and be happy and like her lots.

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2001