Which characters in literature do you most relate to? Do you think they are the same type as you?

In some of the type descriptions available, the authors present fictional examples of certain types. For example, Anne of Green Gables has been described as INFP and Lord Peter Wimsey as ENTP, Heathcliff as ESTP. I suppose I should relate to Gandalf, Mr. Darcy and (shudder) Hannibal Lecter as INTJs. As a child I really related to Harriet the Spy and that girl who was left on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Now maybe it's Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart (not that I subscribe to Rand's philosophies). Has anyone else ever thought about this?

I think people have thought about characters who are like them. I didn't realize that I had a kinship with Lord Peter Wimsey.

I'm an INFP, but I don't care for Anne of Green Gables. She's a little overly dramatic for my tastes. But I do relate to Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse-Five because he's on a quest for the truth and because he's kind of lost, and I feel lost a lot. I relate J. D. Salinger's characters, particularly Holden, Franny, and Seymour. I relate to Bone in Bastard Out of Carolina. I relate to the quirkiness of Richard Brautigan. I take it you are asking which characters we relate to and not which we "like."

I was going to answer that my favourite characters are generally NOT fellow INTJs ... but then I thought of a really compelling exception.

The first literary character I wholeheartedly identified with, as a 13-year-old girl, was the young Belgian woman who became the nun called Sister Luke in The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme. My interest wasn't especially to do with reading about the life of a nun. Rather, I was absolutely fascinated with this female character who had a complex interior life, who was uncomfortably intelligent, and who practiced a kind of devastatingly honest self-examination that I found very admirable. She wrestled with moral questions in a way I had never seen any other fictional female characters do. Her struggle made me think very hard about the distinction between religion and religiosity.

Looking back now, I realize that almost certainly Sister Luke would be considered an INTJ. To quote Gandalf, "And that may be an encouraging thought." I rarely develop affection for INTJ characters, but it's nice to think that she is an exception!

As an INTJ I'm not how to feel about Hannibal Lecter being considered an INTJ as well...

Well, Lecter is a sociopath, so we have to take that into account. Presumably we have escaped that curse.

On the Typelogic page for ISTJ, the fictional characters listed as matching this personality type are Joe Friday, Mr. Martin, Eeyore, Fred Mertz, Puddleglum the marshwiggle and Cliff. Of these, I'm only familiar with Eeyore, which I don't feel particularly related to (out of A.A. Milne's characters, I would rather have picked Owl I think, but I haven't read those stories since I was a kid).

So, I went googling for other ISTJ pages, and look what I found. According to an analysis by Damon & Peni, X Files special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are INTJ and ISTJ, respectively. While I'm not an ardent X Files fan myself, I have seen a few episodes, and I think I can indeed relate quite well to Dana's way of reasoning in the series. This may of course be an after-construct by me, as I hadn't even considered her personality in MBTI terms before I encountered this particular analysis. Maybe those of you who are in the INTJ camp can likewise relate to Fox Mulder?

Maybe those of you who are in the INTJ camp can likewise relate to Fox Mulder?

Definitely.

By the way, the role of Dana Scully is played by Gillian Anderson, with whom I happen to share my last name, but just like FBI special agent Scully would have done, I consider that to be a random coincidence of no importance rather than some sign of a higher meaning somewhere...

I'm an ENTP and I have to admit I've always had a special place in my heart for Sherlock Holmes and his contempt for Dr Watson.

--The Mistress

I agree that Scully has to be an ISTJ. But - I've maintained for years that Mulder is an INTP, not an INTJ. For example, he's always going off on strange new investigational tangents at a moment's notice - and seems to be fully in his element doing so, rather than stressing out about it. (Or, he just goes off... leaving Scully wondering where the hell he disappeared to! Spot the P and the J in this picture :-)

On the other hand, Mulder is fully convicted and makes decisions instantaneously. Going after the weirdness is how he progresses toward his ultimate mission: to find the truth, to find his sister. He just wants to act on those decisions and Scully is holding him up with all her pesky questions. Perhaps he is an example of a fully confident INTJ.

I am an INTJ and love Mulder! Now I know why. I have never bothered to figure out what fictional characters are what type because I am more concerned with real humans - they are tough enough to deal with and take up all my time!

Howard Roark is an extreme specimen. Let's not think too much about him, please.

I can't say for sure that I've ever felt any sort of kinship with a literary character. There have been a few that I have admired or found fascinating, but none struck me as particularly... me-ish.

Hang on a moment.

One. Sort of.

Salieri, as portrayed in /Amadeus/. Regrettably, I haven't read or seen the play, but I shall assume that the essence of the character is preserved in the movie, which I have seen.

Salieri! Yes, a surprisingly sympathetic anti-hero.

Actually, I feel quite a lot of kinship with Cyrano (despite my being female and having a quite reasonably sized nose). There is something about his "panache"...

But the feminist in me cannot forget that Cyrano was captivated by Roxane's beauty, not merely her intelligence. If there had been a female Cyrano under his nose (!) - a woman of plain looks, like himself, but with courage, tenderness and wit, also like himself - I doubt that he would have been capable of noticing her.

Has anyone ever written a female Cyrano?

P.S. I am speaking, of course, about the literary Cyrano by Rostand... not the actual, historical man, whose nose was apparently unremarkable.

Welcome chainedwind. Interesting comments.

Yes, Roark is extreme, much more a caricature than a character. If I am more thoughtful about my own question, I revise my answer. I can say that I relate to his role as Outsider with Own Mind. Clean lines. I aspire to clean lines. More realistic characters are messy, like I am, but none in the same way. Roark is the embodiment of an idea and my NT self sure does like ideas. I think I like that he knows what he thinks and just proceeds, which is what I aspire to. But how can I relate to someone who, by definition, could not be a real person? (Yes, I know I'm contradicting myself. See? Messy.)

Thinking more about it, maybe I could say Smilla from Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg. I'll keep thinking about it.

I have not found Salieri to be a sympathetic character. In the movie (I also have not read the play), he was someone whose self-image appeared to be defined by the life and accomplishments of his rival, not his own. His resentment ate at him. I would hate to be obsessed with someone else's success. It's a very uncomfortable thought to imagine myself in his shoes. So I am very curious to know how you find him relatable, chainedwind. Do you have a Mozart in your life? :-)

chamekke, I'm going to give you a very bad example of a female Cyrano story: The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Sorry, it's the only one I can think of.

A truly plain woman who was nevertheless courageous, tender, and intelligent? "Truly plain" meaning "definitely could never be mistaken for a beauty except by extremely unconventional standards that nobody in the story, in fact, holds"?

I might note that if you take the example of fanfiction, plain characters of both sexes are often slyly transformed into stunning god/desses in order to ease the fanfiction author's planned 'shipping.

You could argue that Lady Sybil Vimes from the Discworld books fits the description. (Not exactly high literature, but who cares?) According to the one of the author's in-book descriptions, she's a large, robust woman whose natural hair has mostly been burned away by the dragons she tends to and usually wears a wig and large amounts of padded protective gear. I can't remember if she's plump-ish or just... big. However, she /is/ resourceful, brave, intelligent, loving, etc. And she married late in life - i.e., /after/ she became the large, armored, burnt-haired, wig-wearing dragon lover. Happily, I might add.

...but then, the Discworld books have a definite comic element.

As for Salieri - well, there was a period in my life when I was definitely Salieric and resentful and so forth. Quite badly, too; I was fourteen at the time and I wasn't sure if I envied, admired, hated, or feared my Mozart. I didn't attempt to murder him, but I did end up with a half a dozen angsty poems about the dynamic, many of which involved metaphors about the sun. Recently, I went through the archives of my old weblog and rediscovered exactly how vitriolically obsessed I was.

I wonder why they say INTPs have no sense of ambition?

citygirl, perhaps "sympathetic" was not the word I should have chosen for Salieri's character (in the musical Mozart, that is). "Understandable" comes closer, perhaps. Salieri's envy of Mozart is not especially appealing, but I did sympathize with his recognition of his own mediocrity, which has to be painful for any musician who aspires to create great art.

As for The Truth About Cats and Dogs, I enjoyed that movie, but didn't think that Janeanne Garafalo much resembled Cyrano. She was much too attractive, for one thing. Perhaps the film's creators felt it unrealistic to expect audiences to really believe that the male lead could fall in love with a homely woman.

chainedwind: "A truly plain woman who was nevertheless courageous, tender, and intelligent? 'Truly plain' meaning 'definitely could never be mistaken for a beauty except by extremely unconventional standards that nobody in the story, in fact, holds'?"

That's it! Rather than: "Marian the librarian throws away her glasses, unpins her hair, and to everyone's surprise becomes an instant (if myopic) beauty" ... which isn't too far off that fanfiction description, incidentally :-)

chamekke, I get what you're saying about Cats and Dogs. It didn't work because, while Uma Thurman is some people's idea of a great beauty (I think she's pretty, and unusual-looking), it's not like Garafalo is ugly. It was more like she had a self-esteem problem and didn't put out the effort to play boy-girl games, not that she was unattractive. But you will never, ever find a truly unattractive woman cast as a love interest in mainstream Hollywood. Even Ugly Betty's not ugly.

chainedwind, how did you get over your resentment? Did it just fade away? Did you really want to murder fauxMozart? This is very interesting to me. I'm kind of against jealousy on general principle (not that I'm judging, I mean for myself). My nip (novel in progress. I'm going to get "nip" to catch on, just wait) could be informed a bit on the subject. I hope you don't mind.

I don't think I ever wanted to /murder/ him. Just beat him :D But then I got into a science/tech school where half the kids could outgenius him while simultaneously playing video games, instant messaging, and doing their homework. Needless to say, that put things in perspective.

If a woman sees a beautiful pearl necklace, and is at once overawed by its loveliness and resentful that she cannot ever afford it, she might find thoughts of it intruding here and there, more often than she'd expected. If she then enters a grand hall along whose walls hundreds of cabinets and cases stand, displaying thousands of exquisitely crafted jewelry set with flawless gems, then at first the pearl necklace is all but forgotten, and in time, the ubiquity of the jewelry will dull her initial dazzlement.

#17 - I wouldn't say that INTPs are unambitious - they are just as set on "taking over the world" as INTJs are, they just get distracted by some other new project and work on that until they get bored. Short term ambition, without the follow through.

I haven't read anything about Cyrano, but a female character that would possibly fit your description is Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Jones, recently made into an animated movie. The main character is a young woman who was magically turned into a haggard old lady. She meets up with a young wizard who cares way too much about how -he- looks, and they fall in love. Even though he knows she was cursed into being an old lady, he doesn't have beauty as "incentive" for their relationship.

I have to admit that I've always identified with Winston Smith from George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. I know that sounds very weird but I'm an INFJ and, thinking about it, I can't help feeling that Winston was too. Also Andrew Manson, the young, idealistic doctor in A.J. Cronin's 'The Citadel'. After all I am a young, idealistic doctor called Andrew... was he an INFJ too?

Since I posted this my wife has started reading 'The Citadel'. A few chapters in she turned to me and said "My God, he's just like you, isn't he?" You see - I wasn't kidding, the resemblance is uncanny. My wife (another INFJ) also relates to Winston Smith.

I identified with someone real - Anne Frank. Others I've liked but not so much identified with as aspired to be like, are: Elizabeth I, Peter the Great, etc. I think it's their determination, strength and innovation - not power.

I'll have to give some thought to fictional characters that I can identify with. I'm surprised that Anne of Green Gables is designated an "I" - I thought she would be considered an "E" for sure.

Oh, Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice would be one. What type do you think she was? I'm ENFP/ENTP but only borderline extraversion. I was more so when I was younger. I'm sure the NF is stronger in me than NT temperment.

As for A.A. Milne characters, I identify with Winnie the Pooh - curious, does things the hard way, easy going, philosophical.

The main character in all Franz Kafka novels and long stories I identify with, and have done since I first read them as a teenager. I think they are always Kafka himself. I believe he was an INTJ (or just possibly INFJ). He sees the world as I do.

I don't think he is ever credited for how funny his writing is. It is always described as 'nightmarish', but to me it is often laugh out loud funny - it is just how the world is, complex, unknowable except in a localised, small way, and as a result just so hilarious a place to be.

There was a story on Kafka just the other day on NPR about how he had given his friend instructions to burn his writing at his death and his friend's failure to obey. I wonder what type the friend would have been.

Yes, Max Brod, who was also a successful author.

From what little I know of Brod, he seems to be an F, very encouraging and supportive of Kafka (who always doubted his own talents).

I'm an INFJ, male, somewhat of a rarity I've read (something like 2% or so of men are INFJs), and two characters from the same classic novel, Les Miserables I've strongly identified with at different times in my life: Jean Valjean (when I was younger, idealistic, naive, religious) and Javert (now that I'm cynical, skeptical & cantankerous).

The anti-hero, Travis Bickle, from Taxi Driver resonates with me as well. Travis is a seriously, perhaps pathologically flawed character, and yet despite all his weaknesses & delusions, he still has a soft heart for protecting & rescuing the weak (runaway children) among us.

The Travis Bickle character made a big impact on me as well. I think he is played as an IN or some sort, but then I have always thought De Niro was an IN of some sort too.

Right now I'm trying to type my favorite literary detective, Nero Wolfe. I think he's either an INTJ or INTP. He has both the characteristics of the Mastermind and the Architect. Definitely an introvert and reclusive, he seems to care little for social conventions. Wolfe is a gourmet cook and raises orchids. He likes his set schedule and can get very irritated if something interrupts it. His assistant Archie Goodwin collects most of the facts for him, and then Wolfe goes into coma-like concentration studying the facts and forming his hypothesis. Archie, the closest thing to a close companion for Wolfe, is a wise-cracking, sarcastic, lover boy who Wolfe tolerates (an INTJ trait with mates).

Any other Nero Wolfe fans out there? What type do you think Wolfe is?

I will probably get put on a watch list by this admission but this INFP, with borderline J, chooses The Stranger. I also relate to Kafka and I think he has to be INF because of the rarity of male INF's. You can't be alienated without being different from the norm.