When you read a book, what colour is the protagonist?

Generally the reader sees the protagonist as an extention of themselves, so they would probably share the same ethnicity, unless specifically stated otherwise in the text.

Last book (or series of) I read was Harry Potter, so, umm... green

The protagonist is always a purple giraffe named Mortimer, unless it's specifically mentioned otherwise in the text.

syklops wrote: »

Wilheim Smith isn't of German english descent???

I always thought he was Irish - Italian.

Generally white, but that's largely due to the fact that I read books from Irish or British authors writing about Irish or British people, so it's pretty safe to assume the protagonist is white.

But even when I started reading James Patterson's books about Alex Cross, I assumed Cross was white until I was halfway through the second book and I finally connected the dots between Cross and Morgan Freeman.

Deleted User wrote: »

That means nothing. In the book, "I Am Legend", the character was of German-English descent, with blonde hair and blue eyes.. so white as white can be, really, but in the movie he became Will Smith.

So? That's a movie adaptation. Directors and producers sometimes take liberties and change things. Books and movies are not always the same and stories change sometimes to suit the screen.

Deleted User wrote: »

That means nothing. In the book, "I Am Legend", the character was of German-English descent, with blonde hair and blue eyes.. so white as white can be, really, but in the movie he became Will Smith.

Morgan Freeman's character in the Shawshank novella is a red haired Irish guy, hence "Red", the "maybe its because I'm Irish" line was thrown in as a nod to that in the movie. Overall it doesn't matter to me if they recast a different race actor unless ethnicity is something written as part of the character. Nick Fury is white in the comic and Samuel L Jackson in the movies, now in the comics he's black, tis all interchangeable.

Tell what I do though, if I read a book after I've seen the movies its near impossible to imagine other faces other than actors in the parts, like reading Silence Of The Lambs, you just think of Anthony Hopkins for Hannibal, or the cast of LOTR etc.

In Watership Down I always thought of Hazel as White.

The bloody film version was crazy he was played by a rabbit

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Most books though are set in a specific time and place and have distinctive characters so you know their race, sex etc. ( In most cases).

In very few cases are you left in doubt about these facts.

I mean in Jane Austen's novels its never mentioned that her characters are white but for the time and place you know they must have been. In Ulysses Bloom is mentioned as Jewish because I assume there are so few Jews in Ireland ( I haven't read the book).

A bright teal