Five Fictional Mentors Who Did the Heavy Lifting of My Personality

The Case for Fictional Role Models

We talk a lot about mentors in American culture — the boss who believed in you, the professor who changed your life. But I'd argue most of us were actually raised, at least in part, by fictional people. They never canceled on us. They said exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, because someone wrote them to. And unlike real mentors, they're available for rewatch.

Here are five who did the heavy lifting of my personality. Fair warning: the list is a little chaotic. So am I.

Hermione Granger, or: The Liberation of Being the Know-It-All

There's a moment in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the book, not the movie, we'll get into that fight another time — where Hermione wipes her parents' memories to protect them. It's devastating, and it taught twelve-year-old me something complicated: that intelligence and sacrifice aren't opposites, and that loving people sometimes means doing hard, unglamorous things for them.

But honestly, the bigger lesson was smaller. Hermione was annoying. She knew she was right. She raised her hand. For a kid who got told to tone it down more than once, watching her never tone it down — and be right — was quietly radical.

Leslie Knope, or: Enthusiasm as a Moral Position

Parks and Recreation gave us a lot, but its real gift was proving that sincerity could be funny. Leslie Knope cares enormously about small things — waffles, binders, a local park — and the show never punishes her for it.

I think about this every time I'm embarrassed to be excited about something. Leslie's whole thesis is that caring loudly is not cringe; it's a discipline. When I wrote my first enthusiastic, un-ironic piece on this site, a friend teased me about it. I channeled Knope: made her a friendship-themed gift basket in my head, and kept the enthusiasm.

Atticus Finch, Complicated On Purpose

Yes, I know. Go Set a Watchman complicated him, and real-life reactions to Harper Lee complicated everything else. But the version of Atticus from To Kill a Mockingbird — the one who tells Scout you never really understand a person until you climb into his skin and walk around in it — gave me my first vocabulary for empathy as an active practice, not a feeling.

The lesson stuck even as the hero worship faded. That's its own lesson, maybe: you can keep the useful part of an idea and let the rest go.

Moana, or: The Call You Can't Argue With

Moana's grandmother doesn't tell her to stay. She tells her to listen to the voice inside her that's already leaving. I watched this movie on a red-eye to visit family, somewhere over middle America, and cried into a tiny bag of pretzels like a functional adult.

What got me wasn't the voyage. It was the idea that knowing who you are isn't a destination — it's a decision you keep making, sometimes against everyone's advice, sometimes against your own fear. I think about that every time I've chosen the scarier path, which is to say, every time something worked out.

Samwise Gamgee, or: The Radical Power of Just Staying

Everyone wants to be Frodo. Nobody admits they're Sam. But Sam is the actual hero of The Lord of the Rings — Tolkien basically said so — the one who carries the burden-bearer when the burden-bearer can't walk.

Sam taught me that loyalty isn't passive. "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you" is, in my opinion, the single best line about friendship in all of literature, and I will not be taking questions. It reframed what showing up for people looks like: not solving their problems, just refusing to let them fall alone.

Your Turn

Here's my invitation: make your own list. The exercise is sneakily revealing. The characters we cling to are mirrors with better dialogue — they show us who we wanted to be, who we're afraid we are, and who we're quietly becoming.

Mine taught me to raise my hand, care loudly, walk around in other people's skin, answer the call, and carry my friends. Not a bad education from people who don't technically exist. Drop yours in the comments — I genuinely want to know who raised you.