Christ figures in literature?

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Bulbasaur05

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Simon - Lord of The Flies
John Coffee - Stephen King’s Green Mile
Edward Scissorhands (book)
Frodo Baggins - The Lord of the Rings

I would like to discuss and list different Christ figures in literature and why they transcend into secular culture through literature. Is there a theological reason the characters are so powerful? Is this is modern equivalent of "cave drawings? i.e. man searching for God.
 
Superman in “Man of Steel”
Aslan in “Narnia Lion Witch and Wardrobe”
 
There is definitely something core to our humanity that causes us to love a hero overcoming odds to do good. Like God, we like there to be order, not chaos. Heroes usually bring order to the places they encounter. They right the wrongs, mete out justice. We all know we are imperfect, but we create these perfect people as role models. This is all a reflection of God because we are all created in God’s image.
 
I was happily surprised: Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
 
… “I could be back home living in luxury, but here I am alone with four million North Koreans. I’m risking my life to save theirs. That’s humility.”
… Now I simply stood staring at the crowd until the translation was over.
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– Theresa, staring down millions of people who were ordered to kill her
 
RPRPsych said:
No, because he’s a consequentialist, doing evil (using Crucio, for starters) that good may come. That’s a no-no for a Christ figure. 😉
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Doesn’t that make every character a failed Christ figure, unless they are explicitly perfect and therefore implicitly God (not a figure)?
 
Bulbasaur05 said:
Simon - Lord of The Flies
John Coffee - Stephen King’s Green Mile
Edward Scissorhands (book)
Frodo Baggins - The Lord of the Rings

I would like to discuss and list different Christ figures in literature and why they transcend into secular culture through literature. Is there a theological reason the characters are so powerful? Is this is modern equivalent of "cave drawings? i.e. man searching for God.
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There was an Edward Scissorhands book?:confused:
 
Oscar Wilde said that “in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.” I guess look at every author’s first novel you’ll find a Christ figure? An exaggeration maybe, but a lot of secular novels do contains Christ-analogous figures. Alyosha from Brothers Karamazov, Prince Myshkin from “The Idiot” are two interesting ones.

I also always wondered if the character of Psyche in C.S. Lewis’s “Till We Have Faces” was supposed to be a Christ-type figure.
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Softly:
Jim Casy in “Grapes of Wrath”.
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Just started reading that, only just past the point where main character meets “former preacher” Casy. Interested to see how the character develops.
 
Severian in Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” series seems to be, although Wolfe has said he is not so much a Christ figure as a Christian figure.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
Severian in Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” series seems to be, although Wolfe has said he is not so much a Christ figure as a Christian figure.
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No, I would not call him a Christ figure.

His motivations are not quite that altruistic (only when forced to torture a woman he is in love with, does he question his beliefs).

ICXC NIKA
 
Raskolnikov said:
Oscar Wilde said that “in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.” I guess look at every author’s first novel you’ll find a Christ figure? An exaggeration maybe, but a lot of secular novels do contains Christ-analogous figures. Alyosha from Brothers Karamazov, Prince Myshkin from “The Idiot” are two interesting ones.

I also always wondered if the character of Psyche in C.S. Lewis’s “Till We Have Faces” was supposed to be a Christ-type figure.

Just started reading that, only just past the point where main character meets “former preacher” Casy. Interested to see how the character develops.
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That is an interesting quote by Oscar Wilde. I wonder why this is the case so often. There is a prevalence of Christ-figures in a secularized (nowadays) society.
 
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