Who are your three favorite heroes/heroines in literature?

[Nanjing to Seoul]

For me, in order of #3 to #1 is simple:

#3: O-Lan (欧兰 from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. This is a woman who gives her spirit and soul to a soul dead man who only really cares about his own gratitude. She raises children that view her poorly and dies alone while her husband entertains his concubine. She is the essence of purity in my eyes. And what happens to purity in an impure world.

#2: Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I read the book long before watching the opera for the first time and the book really got to a man. Here is a man hunted and chased for a minor mistakes not only by the law, but by his own conscience for feeling he has never done enough to atone for his mistakes. Valjean has so little to dislike in a character or a hero that when he dies, you feel part of your heart die with him.

#1: Samwise Gamgee from JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings Triology. No other character shows true devotion and genuine caring for another as Samwise does for Frodo. Samwise is everything people should be to each other. And at the end, after years of taking care of Mr. Frodo, when he boards the white ship with Elrond, Bilbo and Gandalf, we feel and know that Samwise wants, one more time, to be the man to save and protect Frodo. As the ship leaves, Samwise feels part of himself leave with Frodo. Samwise Gamgee is probably the greatest heroic character in the history of literature.