The Most Memorable Characters in Literature

I admit it: I like top-ten lists. Even though I might not always agree with the choices, I do enjoy reading what other people think are the most important of this and that. So in that vein, I've decided to put together some lists of my own. My versions aren't top-ten lists (some don't even reach to ten and others go past that arbitrary marker), since I've never been very good at ordering things by importance. I'm not quite sure if you can with something as subjective and memorable as literary characters.

Everybody has his own list of characters that have touched him in some way or left an indelible imprint on the cultural imagination. Mine, quite frankly, are my own, which is to say, you might not always agree with my selections, but they are certainly selections that are undeniably well-known even to non-readers. So how did I arrive at my decisions? Basically I stuck with choices that I had already read. While I agree that such characters as Scarlett O'Hara or Rabbit Angrim are memorable characters and have appeared on similar lists, I myself have never read Gone With the Wind or Roth's Rabbit series. Rather, I chose characters from novels I've read that have touched me in some way or ones that I remembered even long after the novel's plot has somehow faded from my own memory. I think that's a pretty good determination of what's memorable and what's not.

So, therefore, in that vein, here are, in no particular order, my list of the most memorable characters found in literature.