Today, I kinda want to make a list of the fictional characters that I relate to most. Anytime anyone interacts with a story they naturally gravitate towards some characters more than others. This gravitation can be for any number of reasons, not necessarily personally relating to the characters, but, it is a reason and I’m interested to more thoroughly consider, off the top of my head since I haven’t done this before, a list of characters that I do find myself relating to. This list isn’t in any order at all and, as I’ve said, is off the top of my head, for the most part. If I have some reasonings, thought out enough, or succinct enough, to be able to say, I’ll say them.
Truman Burbank, The Truman Show. Truman is the hero of the story. This is NOT why I relate to him. In fact, the people around him are not portrayed as psychological symbols or representations of Truman’s inner confusion. They are human beings. The movie shows interviews with them being actors and real people. The “Wife” crosses her fingers when they get married and that’s a huge example of humanity. I possibly relate most to the paradox that he can’t seem to unravel. He knows the people around him enough to know that they are, indeed, real human beings and not evil entities, not machines. At the same time, he is acutely aware that something about them isn’t what it seems. He can feel the unreal nature of so many of the interactions he has on a day to day basis. People so rarely let their masks down and actually say, or do, what they want. That can make it difficult for a person like Truman to truly connected to the people around him.
Maria, The Sound of Music. This one isn’t so complicated to explain. I’m an educator by trade, and by nature. I’m great with kids, especially ones who have been deprived of nothing except freedom, playfulness, empathetic attentiveness, and fun, throughout their family lives. I’m apathetic about wealth and appealing to people who, due to their occupation or societal circles, have come to find sincerity to be surprisingly refreshing.
Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption. Andy is a personally, fictional, hero of mine. His level of restriction is not one that I would compare my life to. It would be to far from the truth. However, it is extremely relatable, I think for lots of people, to feel like you are stuck in a System that limits your ability to act and express for arbitrary, unhealthy, ineffective, unsound, and unethical reasonings. Additionally, I relate to, but maybe cannot match, his ability to, throughout his struggles, maintain his identity and his hope.
Harold Crick, Stranger Than Fiction.
Chuckie, Good Will Hunting. Now, you may expect for me to say that either the troubled genius or the honest therapist before saying Chuckie. Who even is Chuckie? Chuckie is Will’s friend, the one who picks him up each morning. He’s Ben Affleck’s character. I think I relate to him more because I’m not a therapist. Even if I entered into the career of Therapy I don’t think I would consider myself as a Therapist. I’m me. I’m not any other title, or term. I’m me. Other people look at my life, my bank account, my career, my lack of a wife and kids, and they use that as a reason to look down on me and to discount my advice. Even Will, in the movie, discredits Chuckie’s advice because Chuckie and Will have the same shit job. I relate to Chuckie here because Will is the only one who isn’t at peace with their current place in life. Chuckie thinks it a shit job as well but he’s not pissed off or terrified of where he is, like Will is.
Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now. Let me start here by addressing the elephant in the room. I am not a soldier or a veteran of war or experienced with anything close to that level of brutality and violence. Just had to get that stipulation out of the way. I relate to Willard’s primary internal conflict: what is man? Willard, like his predecessor Marlow, is on a journey deep into the unvarnished side of human existence. He volunteers to be thrown into the deep end of our darkness and, consciously or not, foolishly or not, at least tries to understand it. I am not in that particular deep end of humanity, War, but I think people don’t realize how much of the human soul is out there, at the tips of your fingers, for free consumption. You must not avert your eyes from the darkness. People who know me might believe that I’m constantly hiding from pain. Even my own mother told me recently that like 40% of my life choices are motivated primarily by fear. People see my choices and translate them into evidence of fear. They’re wrong but I, like Willard am too busy to do the needless things necessary to convince her, or other people, that I am not afraid. I look into the hearts of darkness and light, and grey and every other color. Willard is afraid, yes, but I’m not him. I don’t relate to everything or nothing.
Ray Kinsella, Field of Dreams. The aspect of Ray that I feel most people relate to is his relationship to his father. That relationship is, by far, the focal point of the story. However, my relationship with my father is incredibly unlike Ray’s. Ray regretted running away from the relationship. It’s safe to say that I run towards. The part of Ray that I relate to is is relationship with Faith. When I say “faith” I don’t refer to the more clearly defined notions of “Christian Faith”. Ray displays faith when he hears his heart and his soul, via the narrative tools of the film, and instead of discounting them immediately, as the real people so often do, he has faith in them. I can’t tell you how much of my life was my Reasoning-Self being at odds with my Feeling-Self. It is very difficult, as a human being on Earth, surrounded by other “reasoning” Human beings, to have faith in yourself. My life, like other, was planned for me. Obviously, I had the choice to do whatever I wanted. I could have skipped college, even dropped out of high-school, and done whatever I wanted. I don’t mean that I was a slave to a plan, I mean that any other plan was heavily unsupported. Get good grades, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, provide for my family, grow old, and then die happy. This type of control is often equated as part of the Father-Son relationship but I believe it is far more accurate to say it is part of the Human-Society relationship. In Field of Dreams, Ray’s ability to act on faith, despite his inability to explain to Society, is what I admire in him, and, one of the things I admire in myself.
Cool Hand Luke, Cool Hand Luke. This is another character who has it far more rough than I do, but again, that’s irrelevant. There is a chance that you may want to harp on that, on my lack of incredible pain. If you want to, as people often do, turn Struggle into a competition, where the person with the most struggle wins the game, is the most wise, deserves the most compassion, and earns domination over “The Conch”, then I will remind you of two things. One; Andy Dufresne, Captain Willard, and Cool Hand Luke have actually experienced far less pain than me because they aren’t actually real. Even if this was a competition, I’d win. I’d win with a gimmick technicality but you chose the game. I told from the start it was stupid, you can’t really complain if I prove myself correct. Two; I don’t care. We all have struggles in life. I make no claims of accomplishment and praise worthiness. Anyway, What I relate to about Luke is not his Poker playing skill, or his prison, or his eating ability. I relate to his unbreakable spirit. Yes, spoilers, he dies at the end of the movie, but everyone dies. Death is not a loss or a failure. The scene where Luke convinces the walking gang to finish their road work in a rush, that is the scene where Luke’s self-actualization shines brightest. It is that understanding of choice, in all moments of the present, that I admire in both he and I.
That’s my list. The only one I knew I was gonna say, before starting to write this, was Truman and Maria. I left Harold Crick without an explanation cause I got bored and didn’t feel the need to go through it.
The Mind of Joshypoo 