Literary Astrology: Aries

Born under the first sign of the zodiac and one of our personal favorites, Aries make excellent protagonists. Adventurous, outgoing, courageous, confident, forceful, and dynamic, they can also be selfish, impulsive, and quick-tempered. No wonder, as their key element is fire, their ruling planet is Mars, and their symbol is the ram. We smell drama! These characters were definitely Ariens.

Achilles (The Iliad, by Homer)
Oh, the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles. The demigod warrior (we’re assuming demigods are subject, like humans, to the influence of the stars) sails from Greece to Troy, where he then refuses to fight after being dissed by Agamemnon, even vengefully praying to Zeus for his enemies to gain ground so he can look good, resulting in the death of his friend Patroclus. He goes on to batter those Trojans like one pissed-off ram.

Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Aries possess many traits considered traditionally male, so Aries women tend to be called “strong” (among other things), which brings to mind one sassy lady named Lizzie Bennet. Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and confident in a society where women are expected to be coquettishly modest (which we would say is courageous), she also impulsively judges her twoo wuv, almost sabotaging her own happiness.

Tom Sawyer (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)
Adventurous: check. Tom is the quintessential boy behaving badly: playing hooky, getting in fights, swearing blood oaths, running away to become a pirate, caving, and hunting treasure. In his youth and relative privilege, he is also quite self-centered, torturing his family and, most notably, the former slave Jim with his escapades.

Dean Moriarty (On the Road, by Jack Kerouac)
Kerouac based the character of Dean Moriarty on his friend and cohort Neal Cassady, a driving force of the Beat movement. We can’t speak for the real guy (who, for the record, was an Aquarius), but Dean is reckless and restless, charismatic and nomadic, as well as passionately impulsive and wildly self-centered in his many and varied romantic relationships, in other words, a classic Aries.

James Bond (the James Bond series by Ian Fleming et al.)
Speaking of many and varied romantic relationships, we think the astrology powers that be (?) should just ditch the ram and make the Aries symbol Bond, James Bond, even if his birthday is supposedly in November (how do we know that’s not his cover story). Confident, courageous, and “always ready for action” (in more ways than one)—basically the tagline for every Bond novel or movie ever made.

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)
The stars must have shifted slightly in the apocalypse, because Katniss, born May 8 under Taurus, also exhibits quite a few characteristics of an Aries (March 21-April 19). The bad-ace acts before she thinks because she has to, which makes her both impulsive and courageous. In doing so, she becomes a natural-born, if reluctant, leader. Katniss is never shy about the fact that she’s in it for her and her own.

Who are your favorite suspected literary Aries?