Public-domain characters as mirrors, described in our own words. In this character you can clearly see…
Odyssey · Homer
In this character you can clearly see practicality as strength: reading a situation, finding a way around, and staying with the goal of getting home for years.
Facets in focus
For you
Where have you found a way around instead of a way through — and what did the detour cost?
Agamemnon · Aeschylus
Knowing without grounds. The story shows why a hunch is not enough on its own: it has to be checked, and it has to reach other people.
Facets in focus
For you
When did you see something early and fail to make it audible?
Antigone · Sophocles
An inner norm set against an external order — and the price of having no flexibility at all.
Facets in focus
For you
Which of your lines is worth its price, and which one you have simply never re-examined?
Don Quixote · Cervantes
A contrast pair: imagination with no footing in fact, and common sense with no flight. Neither of them is complete alone.
Facets in focus
For you
Which of the two do you lean on more, and who supplies the other half for you?
Hamlet · Shakespeare
The classic gap between understanding and doing: thought that quietly takes the place of action.
Facets in focus
For you
What have you understood thoroughly and still not begun?
Les Misérables · Hugo
A contrast pair: a norm that came alive in participation, against a norm frozen into form.
Facets in focus
For you
Where does your own rule serve a person, and where does it only serve the rule?
Pride and Prejudice · Austen
A rare case: the heroine catches the error in her own judgement and revises it without collapse.
Facets in focus
For you
What judgement of yours has recently earned a second look?
The Red and the Black · Stendhal
Here the tipping point of practicality is visible: advantage crowds out everything, relationships become instruments.
Facets in focus
For you
Which relationship of yours has started to look like a route?
Madame Bovary · Flaubert
The image of a life stands in for the life; feeling stops being distinguishable from what is happening.
Facets in focus
For you
Where does the picture you hold of your life differ from this week?
Faust · Goethe
A thirst for knowledge not balanced by any share in another person's fate.
Facets in focus
For you
Whose life is affected by what you are currently pursuing?
A Doll's House · Ibsen
A move from a borrowed norm to one's own — the clearest reminder that a profile is not a sentence.
Facets in focus
For you
Which of your rules did you inherit rather than choose?
Os Maias · Eça de Queirós
A design that never becomes a deed. Plenty of understanding, plenty of plans, little that gets finished.
Facets in focus
For you
Which of your plans has been ready for two years?