The theme this week is “top ten characters who [x].” I decided to focus on characters who are alone, literally or figuratively. In no particular order:
Robert Neville in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend—the last man on Earth after the apocalyptic spread of a virus.
Hank Palace in Ben Winters’s The Last Policeman: a police detective who, alone of his colleagues, continues trying to solve a murder case as an asteroid hurtles along on a collision course with Earth.
Karana in Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, who survives alone on an island off the California coast when her tribe leaves for the mainland.
Joe Mackatozi in Louis L’Amour’s Last of the Breed, a Native American USAF pilot who escapes from Soviet captivity and treks alone across Siberia.
Aquila in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Bearers, an embittered young Romano-British legionary seeking vengeance for his massacred family.
Orual in C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, alienated from the divine by pride and selfish love.
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, adrift on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger in the middle of the Pacific.
Odysseus in The Odyssey (and subsequent retellings—I particularly enjoy Sutcliff’s The Wanderings of Odysseus).
The father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
The Cat That Walked by Himself in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.