Wilhelmina "Mina" Murra
She is a young school mistress in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and friends with Lucy Westenra. After the events with Dracula which caused both her and her fiancée, later husband Jonathan Harker, to become vampires, they are both released from his curse.
Ishmael
Ishmael is the narrator of the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by U.S. author Herman Melville. It is through his eyes and experience that the reader experiences the story of the ship Pequod, and the fight between Captain Ahab and the white whale. He is a central character in the action in the early part of the novel, essentially fulfilling all the requirements of being a conventional protagonist. After the Pequod leaves Nantucket, he increasingly recedes into the background as a commentator, with his voice approaching that of an omniscient narrator at times, able to see into all parts of the ship and into the private motivations of other characters.
Captain Nemo
He is a character featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). Nemo, one of the most famous anti-heroes in fiction, is a mysterious figure, about whom all we know is that he identifies with the oppressed, and that he has apparently lost his wife and children. He is a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus, which he built on a deserted island. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea he states that the laws of the world on the surface do not apply to him any longer, and that he has fled to the sea to escape the barbarism of the human race, with its wars and oppression. He claims to have no interest in the affairs of the world above, but occasionally intervenes to aid the oppressed, giving salvaged treasure to Cretans resisting a Turkish invasion, by saving (both physically and financially) a pearl hunter who was the unfortunate victim of a diving accident or by sinking warships. In The Mysterious Island, a still mysterious but gentler Nemo secretly helps the castaways off the island and in the end warns them that the island will perish in a volcanic eruption. Nemo dies of a mysterious illness just before the eruption and is buried in his ship that is then sunk.
Allan Quatermain
He is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various sequels and prequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence. Quatermain is an English-born professional big game hunter and occasional trader in southern Africa. While not precisely anti-colonial in his outlook, he favours native Africans having a say in how their affairs are run, a rather progressive outlook for a Victorian. Quatermain is a quintessential outdoorsman who finds English cities and climate unbearable, and thus prefers to spend most of his life in Africa, where he grew up under the care of his widower father, a Christian missionary. In the earliest-written novels native Africans refer to Quatermain as Macumazahn, meaning "Watcher-by-Night," a reference to his nocturnal habits and keen instincts. In later-written novels Macumazahn is said to be a short form of Macumazana, meaning "One who stands out." Quatermain is frequently accompanied by his native servant, the Hottentot Hans, a wise and caring family retainer from his youth whose sarcastic comments offer a sharp critique of European conventions. In his final adventures Quatermain is joined by two British companions, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good of the Royal Navy, and by his African friend Umslopogaas.
Dr Henry Jekyll
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1885. It is about a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the misanthropic Edward Hyde. The story begins when the lawyer Gabriel John Utterson hears from his relation Richard Enfield of an ambiguous, solitary, violent man called Hyde. This Hyde is said to have walked over a girl who had fallen on the road, leaving her unharmed but terrified; whereupon Enfield ordered him, backed by several other people, to pay a fine to the girl's family. Hearing this tale, Utterson is perturbed; a friend of his, Dr Jekyll, has made a will declaring that in the event of the doctor's death or "disappearance", Hyde should inherit all his property. Suspecting trouble, Utterson seeks to investigate Hyde.
Tom Sawyer
He is the lead of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a character in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896). Tom Sawyer is a cunning, playful boy. He is around twelve years old. His best friends include Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is apparent that Tom is infatuated with Rebecca (alias Becky) Thatcher. He has a half-brother, Sid, a cousin, Mary, and his aunt is known as Aunt Polly, all of whom he lives with. Tom is Aunt Polly's dead sisters' son. It is unknown how Tom's mother died. Among the adventures Tom gets himself into are revealing Injun Joe's crime, getting trapped in a cave with Becky Thatcher, discovering Injun Joe's treasure, and going to his own funeral.
Invisible Man
Griffin is a fictional character, the eponym of H.G. Wells's science fiction novel The Invisible Man, first published in 1897. Griffin (his first name is not given in the novel) is a brilliant research scientist who discovers a formula capable of rendering a human being invisible. He performs the process on himself, but finds himself unable to reverse the formula, which drives him to insanity, crime and murder.
Griffin was a gifted, young, medical student with albinism, who studied optical density while at a university. Griffin believed he was on the verge of a great scientific discovery, but felt uncomfortable working under the eyes of his professor. In order to ensure he would take the credit for himself, he left college and took up residence in a cheap dingy apartment where he could continue his experiments in solitude.
In order to finance his experiments, Griffin robbed his own father- who had apparently stolen the money anyway, and committed suicide after being robbed by his son. (Little was mentioned of Griffin's family background, but it was clearly dysfunctional.) Working reclusively in his flat, he invented a formula to bend light and reduce the refractive index of physical objects, thus making them invisible. He intended from the start to perform the process on himself, but was forced to rush his experiments due to persistent intrusions from his landlord, who was suspicious of his activities. He processed himself in order to hide from his landlord, setting fire to the building to cover his tracks. He wound up alone, invisibly wandering the streets of London, struggling to survive out in the open whilst unseen by those around him. In order to make himself visible again, he stole some clothes from a dingy backstreet theatre shop, including a trenchcoat and hat, wrapping his head in bandages to conceal his invisibility, his eyes covered by large dark goggles. He took up residence in the Coach and Horses Inn in the village of Iping to reverse his experiment in a quiet environment, but complications arose with the locals, who were unnerved by his appearance. As a result, his progress was slowed down and he was left without sufficient money to satisfy the pub's owners. In order to pay his bill, Griffin burgled the home of Reverend Bunting, causing the police to come after him, at which point he revealed his invisibility to all by throwing off his clothes and escaping.
By now driven to insanity by his inability to reverse the experiment, Griffin sought the assistance of a tramp named Thomas Marvel to carry money for him, but Marvel ran away with the money. Griffin pursued him to the town of Port Burdock, and there ran into his old schoolmate Dr. Arthur Kemp. Griffin attempted to convince Kemp to be his visible partner and help him begin a reign of terror. Kemp, rather than assisting the crazed Invisible Man, alerted Colonel Adye of the Port Burdock police.
Furious and still entertaining thoughts of world domination, Griffin vowed to kill Kemp, as the first execution in the reign of terror. He ultimately failed when Kemp rallied the people of Port Burdock, who mobbed the Invisible Man as soon as they had deduced his location, and Griffin was killed when cornered by navvy workers. The effects of the invisibility formula wore off in death, and Griffin's body became visible again.
In the film version, he is called Rodney Skinner due to copyright issues. The name change is explained by the fact that Skinner was a thief who stole the invisibility formula from the original Invisible Man (presumably Griffin).
Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel written by Oscar Wilde, and first came out as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on June 20, 1890. The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward, who is greatly impressed by Dorian's physical beauty and becomes strongly infatuated with him, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism, Lord Henry suggests that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty, and the fulfilment of the senses. Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, wishing that the portrait Basil has painted of him would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, subsequently plunging him into a series of debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin being displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging. The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme. It deals with the artistic movement of the decadents, and homosexuality, both of which caused some controversy when the book was first published. However, in modern times, the book has been referred to as "one of the modern classics of Western literature."
