Literary Characters
OF THE BABY NAME FRANK
You try not to think. You try not to imagine, but then those cracks pop up, and these flashes squeeze right through. At first, some of it's not too bad, and you get stupid, maybe even wanting a little more, but then you pull yourself together, knowing what all is likely going to ooze out if you're not careful....
Fifteen-year-old America has been nowhere, has been nobody. Separated from his foster mother. A runaway. A patient. Without love. Without hope. And, eventually, without the will to live. Until Dr. B. steps in. To listen. To explore. And to find within America both the story and the boy who are lost.
Frank Armstrong is the favorite older brother of the protagonist, Meggie Cleary, in Colleen McCullough’s 1971 blockbuster, The Thorn Birds. Frank is a rebellious, quick-tempered young man, adored by his mother and scorned by his father – with good reason – it’s not his father. It seems that Mama had a serious love affair with a married man, had Frank out of wedlock, and was married off to Paddy Cleary in disgrace. Now that’s a stacked deck to come up against, and poor Frank makes the most of it. When he discovers his heritage, he runs away, much to the sorrow of his mother and sister, and they later learn that he is in prison for killing a man in a fight. We wish we could come up with a happier ending for him.
Frank Churchill is the utterly charming, handsome, well-bred sometimes suitor of Emma Wedgewood in Jane Austen’s 1815 novel, Emma. He is an accomplished horseman and a perfect gentleman. Well, perhaps he’s also just a teeny bit shallow (he travels all the way to London for his haircuts), but he is so difficult to dislike. When we take a closer look at Frank, we see that he is perhaps something of a cad. He is living off his wealthy aunt and is unwilling to declare his intentions for his true love, Jane, whose social standing is lesser than his. In that vein, he pretends to pay suit to the rich girl, Emma, in order to safeguard his potential inheritance. Now, that’s not nice! However, as in all lovely novels of manners, all comes right in the end and true love prevails. And to be completely fair, he does suffer for his sins, and he does seem to grow as a person over the course of the novel. It just seems to us that he’s so much like Emma that he ought to have been paired with her, but we wouldn’t dare presume on Ms. Austen….
Frank Hardy is the older of “The Hardy Boys” in the popular series begun in 1927 by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and written under the collective pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon. Several television adaptations followed over the years. A classic All-American boy, Frank is described as the “serious one” of the duo. Living in the fictional town of Bayport, Some State, the boys have constant thrilling adventures while chasing criminals, decoding mysteries, assisting their detective father on cases, outsmarting the police, and, in general, leading charmed lives. Money is apparently no object, as their passports will attest, as they travel to such foreign climes as Scotland and Egypt when crime takes a breather in Bayport. There is actually little to differentiate Frank from his brother Joe except that he is a year older, he is darker and he has a different platonic girlfriend. Think Tim Considine or Parker Stevenson, and you get the picture.