10 Literary Characters That Were Based On Real People And A Whale

Reading a book is discovering a new world, it’s like undertaking an adventure full of surprises, experiences and even an incredible way to acquire knowledge and new vocabulary. With reading we also get to know ways of living and thinking of characters that end up marking our lives. From those we identify with, due to their personality and the conflicts they experience, to the cruelest villains. It’s surprising how the imagination and creativity of the authors are able to create such complex characters out of nothing, but it’s also interesting to discover that some are based on real people. For this reason, the representation of these people in the cinema ends up being remarkable, but, of course, with the help of talented actors, who leave their mark of exquisite interpretation.

O awesome.club compiled a list to show 10 characters that ended up on movie or TV screens inspired by real people and a real whale. Surprise yourself!

The origin of this character was not always clear. However, in his autobiography, Mark Twain claims that the boy is a portrait of his childhood friend named Tom Blankenship and that he built him exactly as he was: “ignorant, dirty, malnourished, but with a heart as good as any other boy” . What is known about Tom Blakenship is that he was arrested for assault on several occasions and died five years after the book was published. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In 2012, John Green published one of his most famous novels, Blame it on the stars, which tells the story of the protagonist, a 16-year-old girl, Hazel Grace Lancaster, who has thyroid cancer. To create the character, John based himself on the story of Esther Earl, a girl diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 13. Esther was vlogger (video blogger) and met John online🇧🇷 and the two for a time formed a very strong and endearing friendship.

The protagonist of this story was inspired by the life of a woman named Delphine Delamare, whom Gustave Flaubert discovered in a newspaper clipping. Delphine was the daughter of a French landowner and lived on her family’s property until she met Eugéne Delamare, a widower and older than her. They got married, had a daughter, but Delphine, who would have had several lovers, ended up taking her own life in 1848, out of boredom. Flaubert was deeply moved by the drama of this story and decided to immortalize it in a novel.

The work of Herman Melville, moby dick, in addition to being a novel, it is an interesting text that portrays the whaling industry in the 19th century. But his connection with reality does not stop there, because the white whale that kept Captain Ahab up at night, however supernatural it may seem, was not a product of the author’s imagination, as there really was a whale known as Moby Dick. This huge and aggressive animal turned out to be the perfect inspiration for the book.

This well-known fictional character, created by Alexandre Dumas and the protagonist of several adventures, was inspired by Charles de Batz-Castelmore D’Artagnan, who actually lived during the time of Louis XIV. He was born in the year 1611 and belonged to a family of lower nobility. And he was, in reality, the captain of the musketeers. D’Artagnan exercised a variety of activities, from serving as a channel of communication between the cardinal and the queen, to fighting on the battlefield. He died in action during the Franco-Dutch War in 1673.

American writer Jack Kerouac was based on the life of the icon of the roll call beat generation, Neal Cassady, to create the character Dean Moriarty, from the novel On the road🇧🇷 Born in 1926 in the United States, Cassady spent his childhood in poor neighborhoods and became a counterculture reference. The young man was a tireless adventurer and appeared in several of Kerouac’s novels and in works by other authors under various names. Cassady died in Mexico in February 1968.

Loved and hated, Vito Corleone, protagonist of The Godfatheris a character based on several bosses (capos) of the Italian mafia, including Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci, Carlo Gambino and Angelo Bruno. Although the author of the eponymous book, Mario Puzo, also stated that his greatest inspiration was his mother, who had a “relentless personality and at the same time inspired a lot of affection”. This incredible story shows us how the authors’ creativity really has no limits.

Author Bret Easton Ellis said that Tom Cruise was a strong influence on the creation of the character of Patrick Bateman, a yuppie (urban youth stereotype) Manhattan killer and book protagonist The American Psycho, which was also adapted to film. But that doesn’t mean that Tom Cruise is a murderer or anything like that, rather that Ellis thought the actor’s somewhat self-absorbed personality was perfect for describing the character. Even actor Christian Bale said he was inspired by his colleague’s behavior to develop the protagonist.

Harry Potter is one of the most famous wizards of all time and its author, J.K. Rowling, said the young man with glasses was inspired by Ian Potter, a neighbor who grew up in the same neighborhood as hers. Ian used to play around dressed as a magician and that was enough to inspire the writer. In fact, almost all the characters in the saga of Harry Potter were inspired by real people who were part of J.K. Rowling’s life.

Previously, books inspired fans, but thanks to technology and new platforms, now the opposite can happen: fans write books. And it is the case of After, a novel written by Anna Todd, which started out just as a fanfiction🇧🇷 One of the main characters, called Hardin Scott, was based on the singer Harry Styles, world famous for belonging to the band One Direction. Anna was such a fan of the group that she started writing a story on Wattpad (an app that lets you share stories with others). Her narrative was so successful that it ended up being published by a publisher and taken to the cinema.

Can you imagine your neighbor as a villain in a horror story? Or any friends in a comedy story? What other literary characters do you know that existed in real life? Leave your opinion in the comments!