Open Thread: The Most American Character in Fiction?

Give Me Your Suggestions for Characters Who Best Exemplify American Traits

Others may chuckle at our comically high self-regard, but Americans tend to think of ourselves as embodying certain traits: individualism and self-reliance, optimism and practicality, ambition and inventiveness, resilience and adaptability, bravery and a sense—even if complicated, distorted, or ironic—of equality.

I mention this list because I was recently thinking of characters who best exemplify these traits, and I want to hear your suggestions: Who’s the most American character in fiction?

Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross in the Coen Brother’s adaption of Charles Portis’s exceptional novel True Grit.

For me the first names that jumped to mind were Mattie Ross from Charles Portis’s True Grit, John Grady Cole from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, and Huck Finn from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read all three not long ago and recency bias probably played a part in my recollection.

I also recently read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and both Atticus Finch and Scout bubbled up as well. Others who might make the grade:

• Janey Crawford from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Sethe from Toni Morrison’s Beloved

• Ántonia Shimerda from Willa Cather’s My Ántonia

• Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

• Tom Joad from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

• Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

• Dana Franklin from Octavia Butler’s Kindred

I could even imagine inclusion of someone who shows the more desperate side of these traits, say, Bigger Thomas from Richard Wright’s Native Son or Sherman McCoy from Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.

But what do you think: Who’s the most American character you can think of?

As you make your suggestion(s), feel free to modify my list of supposedly American traits. For instance, Americans have a complicated relationship with tradition and innovation; John Grady Cole rejects encroaching modernity, but is there anything more American than enthusiasm about the future? Which character most embodies that?

So, now to you: Who else belongs on this list and who deserves the top slot? Bonus points if you explain why.

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