One can guess that all the main and secondary characters of literary works were not invented by the author, but copied from real people. If all the heroes of the authors were pure fiction, it is unlikely that the works themselves would be of interest to the reader. The fictional character is perfect, and that’s not interesting.
Prototype concept
Each character in a literary work has a double in real life. It can be a writer who created a masterpiece, acquaintances or relatives, and even an interesting historical figure. These people can be called prototypes of literary characters.
What is a prototype in the literature? This is the original image familiar to the writer in life or from historical books, from which he borrowed traits of character and appearance to create a literary hero. At the same time, the writer has the right to speculate a character, modify, complement his personality traits. Often a writer creates such a literary image by choosing a prototype that such a coincidence with a real person is not entirely accurate.
Prototype in realistic literature
Often, according to the writer's idea, a prototype appears that from beginning to end repeats the life path and actions of the author himself. Such works are the most realistic, because they fully absorb the lifestyle and views of the heroes of that era. The writer has to turn to such a prototype in autobiographical works.
Multiple Prototypes - A Collective Image
There are so-called collective images. This is when the prototype of the hero is not one, but several. Creating a literary image, the author takes various features from several people at once. A striking example is the work of M. Yu. Lermontov, “The Hero of Our Time”, where Grushnitsky is a collective image.
Children's literature
For children, the prototype is chosen so that such a work becomes close and understandable to the reading child, because the main character is a child. The young reader is fully aware of his actions. And where do the character children come from? Most often, the prototypes are the children of the writers. So Alice Selezneva appeared in The Secret of the Third Planet, the girl Murochka in the works of K. Chukovsky.
Lewis Carroll's daughter Alice became the prototype of the main character in the work "Alice in Wonderland." Often the story told seems incredible and very interesting, and the names of the characters coincide with the names of the original and his friends. Readers may sometimes consider a prototype. What such a concept can give in the analysis of works? When reading a literary work, I want to know from which person the author wrote off the heroes, whom they remind. This helps to feel the idea and theme of the text.
But the prototype (what this term means, we examined above), quite possibly, does not want to publicize its name. Therefore, sometimes readers only have to guess and build theories about the prototype of this or that hero.