Have you found Jesus?

Get the religious iconography here?

Whenever I read a novel, I try to figure out which character represents Jesus. I don’t know, someone I can’t remember said that maybe it was a good idea.

To be fair, I haven’t read the bible, so my knowledge about the Gospel has arrived in a circuitous route. (Everything I know about the New Testament I learned from The Waste Land) I get excited when I match a character to Jesus. An exchange in class today:

James: “I think Sebastian might be Jesus because at the end he grows a beard.”

Class laughs

James: under his breath “I don’t know; I’m Jewish.”

Professor: Well that doesn’t mean you can’t look for religious iconography.

My professor had a good point. Just because you haven’t read something, doesn’t mean you can’t talk about it with authority. I kind of get the point; Immaculate Conception, miracles, carpenter, beard, betrayed, dies for the sins of humanity, and is reborn. So basically anything that has sacrifice and death and rebirth is Jesus. Here are some connections I have made.

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain-Tom Sawyer.

He resurrects himself. Also, likes to lie down by the river.

Touchdown for Tommy by Matt Christopher: Orphan Tommy

He tries to get his foster father/coach to adopt him by playing well, thus carrying a burden, and making him Jesus. In never revealing the identity of Tommy’s biological father Christopher deftly leaves open the possibility that he could have been God.

Hamlet William Shakespeare: Hamlet

His father is a ghost. Oh, but his mother is not a virgin. And no beard. Nevermind.

The Bible: Moses

He doesn’t get to go into the promised land, thus making a sacrifice.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: The Fish

Wait . . . the old man?