•
Jim Conklin in
The Red Badge of Courage.
R. W. Stallman has first put forward the hypothesis; however, it has led to a long-lasting and controversial debate among Crane scholars. •
Sydney Carton in
A Tale of Two Cities •
Alyosha Karamazov in
The Brothers Karamazov • Uncle Tom and Eva St. Clare in ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin'' • Jim Casy in
The Grapes of Wrath can be seen as taking on the role of both Jesus and
Moses starting in the beginning of the novel where, after taking a break from being a preacher, returns to offer a new and important view of the lives the Okies live. He then embarks on a journey with twelve members of the Joad family, who are analogous to
Jesus' apostles. Casy aims to create a workers union and tries to convince Tom to get others to join, but Tom denies him three times like
Peter denied Jesus. • Santiago of
The Old Man and the Sea by
Ernest Hemingway. •
Aslan in
The Chronicles of Narnia by
C. S. Lewis sacrifices himself to save
Edmund but rises again from the dead to defeat the
White Witch. • Simon in
William Golding's
Lord of the Flies. When Simon reaches up and grabs fruit from the top of a tree for the little boys in the group, it parallels the story of Jesus feeding the people on the mountain with fish and bread. Simon likes to go off on his own (as Jesus did, going into the desert); he "wrestles with the devil" in the form of his conversation with the Lord of the Flies; he goes to the mountaintop to find out the revelation that the "beast" is only a dead pilot, and he is martyred for trying to bring the truth to the other boys. As Simon's corpse is taken by the sea, glowing creatures seem to form a halo around his head. •
Paul Atreides of
Dune is seen as a messianic figure by many characters in the novel and its sequels as he fulfills many of their prophecies and gains precognizant abilities, though they are evidently a part of selective breeding. After reluctantly taking advantage of the prophecy to rise to power, Paul, in a subversion of the "chosen one" character trope, rejects his throne and the prophecy, ashamed of the effects of the cult around him. After abdicating, he spends his final days trying to destroy the religion built upon him until he is assassinated for doing so. •
Finny in
A Separate Peace • Billy Budd in
Billy Budd by
Herman Melville • Queequeg in
Moby Dick by Herman Melville • John Coffey in
The Green Mile. •
Harry Potter in
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter series displays savior qualities during his battles with
Lord Voldemort. On multiple occasions, Harry willingly presents himself as a sacrifice and, by doing so, is able to destroy the evil wizard. As an infant, Harry becomes the only being to withstand the Killing Curse and temporarily defeats Voldemort. Later, after defeating Voldemort for the second time, Harry ultimately dies, as Christ did on the cross. In the end, however, as Christ is resurrected, so is Harry Potter, who returns to ultimately destroy Voldemort. • Meursault in
The Stranger. • Randle Patrick McMurphy in ''
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest''. •
Aragorn, a character in
The Lord of the Rings series, represents the "kingship" nature of Christ. Like Christ, Aragorn is the descendant of a long line of royalty who has been "exiled," or removed from his crown position. At the end of the series, Aragorn returns to Gondor and is named its official king. Along with
Gandalf (sage/prophet) and
Frodo Baggins (saviour/priest), Aragorn completes the triune representation of Christ in the series as its king. • Gandalf the wizard in the novel
The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's
The Lord of the Rings series. In saving his companions from the
Balrog, he falls into an abyss with it, battles with it, dies, and is restored to life by divine intervention. After his return, his robe turns white. The film emphasizes and brings out the symbolic aspects that
J. R. R. Tolkien felt compelled to cut back in the book, and adds to the aspects of the
sage/prophet and the
resurrection aspect also the aspect of the
exorcist by making explicit the nature of his healing of
Théoden. •
Frodo Baggins, a hobbit, also in The Lord of the Rings. His Christ imagery was more emphasized in the film series. Frodo carried the
One Ring, a burden of evil, on behalf of the whole world, like Christ who carried his cross for the
sins of mankind. Frodo walks his "
Via Dolorosa" to
Mount Doom just like Jesus who made his way to
Golgotha. As Frodo approaches the
Cracks of Doom, the Ring becomes a crushing weight as the cross was for Jesus.
Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's friend, parallels
Simon of Cyrene, who carries Frodo up to Mount Doom, much as Simon aids Jesus by picking up his cross to Golgotha. When Frodo accomplishes his mission, like Christ, he says "it is done". As Christ ascends to heaven, Frodo's life in
Middle-earth comes to an end when he departs to the
Undying Lands. Nevertheless, Tolkien makes sure not to present anything like a one-on-one parallel to Christ: Frodo is unmistakably presented as suffering from the effects of the
Fall (in the sense of Catholic theology, in which it is not incompatible with being a genuinely friendly, not unheroic person of certain good-will), which does lead to a major false choice that has to be outdone by
Providence; and he travels to the Undying Lands – an
earthly Paradise, not Heaven – in order to find bodily healing and a possibly long, but finite life in peace. ==Stage, television and film==