| Rank | Character | Relig. Affiliation of Character | Book | Author | Religious Affiliation of Author |
|---|
| 1 | Jay Gatsby | | The Great Gatsby (1925) | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Catholic |
| 2 | Holden Caulfield | | The Catcher in the Rye (1951) | J.D. Salinger | Jewish Catholic; Scientologist |
| 3 | Humbert Humbert | | Lolita (1955) | Vladimir Nabokov | Russian Orthodox |
| 4 | Leopold Bloom | | Ulysses (1922) | James Joyce | Catholic (lapsed) |
| 5 | Rabbit Angstrom | | Rabit, Run (1960) | John Updike | Lutheran |
| 6 | Sherlock Holmes | | The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Catholic; Spiritualist |
| 7 | Atticus Finch | | To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) | Harper Lee | |
| 8 | Molly Bloom | | Ulysses (1922) | James Joyce | Catholic (lapsed) |
| 9 | Stephen Dedalus | | Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) | James Joyce | Catholic (lapsed) |
| 10 | Lily Bart | | The House of Mirth (1905) | Edith Wharton | |
| 11 | Holly Golightly | | Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) | Truman Capote | |
| 12 | Gregor Samsa | | The Metamorphosis (1915) | Franz Kafka | Jewish |
| 13 | The Invisible Man | | Invisible Man (1952) | Ralph Ellison | |
| 14 | Lolita | | Lolita (1955) | Vladimir Nabokov | Russian Orthodox |
| 15 | Aureliano Buendia | | One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Catholic |
| 16 | Clarissa Dalloway | | Mrs. Dalloway (1925) | Virginia Woolf | Neo-pagan |
| 17 | Ignatius Reilly | | A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) | John Kennedy Toole | |
| 18 | George Smiley | | Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) | John LeCarre | |
| 19 | Mrs. Ramsay | | To the Lighthouse (1927) | Virginia Woolf | Neo-pagan |
| 20 | Bigger Thomas | | Native Son (1940) | Richard Wright | Seventh-day Adventist; Communist |
| 21 | Nick Adams | | In Our Time (1925) | Ernest Hemingway | Catholic |
| 22 | Yossarian | | Catch-22 (1961) | Joseph Heller | Jewish |
| 23 | Scarlett O'Hara | | Gone With the Wind (1936) | Margaret Mitchell | Catholic |
| 24 | Scout Finch | | To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) | Harper Lee | |
| 25 | Philip Marlowe | | The Big Sleep (1939) | Raymond Chandler | |
| 26 | Kurtz | | Heart of Darkness (1902) | Joseph Conrad | Catholic; atheist |
| 27 | Stevens | | The Remains of the Day (1989) | Kazuo Ishiguro | |
| 28 | Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo | | The Baron in the Trees (1957) | Italo Calvino | Waldensian Protestant (lapsed); Communist |
| 29 | Winnie the Pooh | | Winnie the Pooh (1926) | A.A. Milne | |
| 30 | Oskar Matzerath | | The Tin Drum (1959) | Gunter Grass | Catholic |
| 31 | Hazel Motes | | Wise Blood (1952) | Flannery O'Connor | Catholic |
| 32 | Alex Portnoy | | Portnoy's Complaint (1969) | Philip Roth | Jewish |
| 33 | Binx Bolling | | The Moviegoer (1961) | Walker Percy | raised agnostic Presbyterian; Catholic convert |
| 34 | Sebastian Flyte | | Brideshead Revisited (1945) | Evelyn Waugh | Catholic |
| 35 | Jeeves | | My Man Jeeves (1919) | P.G. Wodehouse | |
| 36 | Eugene Henderson | | Henderson the Rain King (1959) | Saul Bellow | Orthodox Jew (lapsed); Anthroposophist |
| 37 | Marcel | | Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927) | Marcel Proust | Jewish Catholic |
| 38 | Toad | | The Wind in the Willows (1908) | Kenneth Grahame | |
| 39 | The Cat in the Hat | | The Cat in the Hat (1955) | Dr. Seuss | Lutheran |
| 40 | Peter Pan | | The Little White Bird (1902) | J.M. Barrie | |
| 41 | Augustus McCrae | | Lonesome Dove (1985) | Larry McMurtry | |
| 42 | Sam Spade | | The Maltese Falcon (1930) | Dashiell Hammett | |
| 43 | Judge Holden | | Blood Meridian (1985) | Cormac McCarthy | Catholic |
| 44 | Willie Stark | | All the King's Men (1946) | Robert Penn Warren | |
| 45 | Stephen Maturin | | Master and Commander (1969) | Patrick O'Brian | |
| 46 | The Little Prince | | The Little Prince (1943) | Antoine de Saint-Exupery | |
| 47 | Santiago | | The Old Man and the Sea (1952) | Ernest Hemingway | Catholic |
| 48 | Jean Brodie | | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) | Muriel Spark | Catholic |
| 49 | The Whiskey Priest | | The Power and the Glory (1940) | Graham Greene | Catholic |
| 50 | Neddy Merrill | | The Swimmer (1964) | John Cheever | |
| 51 | Sula Peace | | Sula (1973) | Toni Morrison | |
| 52 | Meursault | | The Stranger (1942) | Albert Camus | Catholic; Existentialism |
| 53 | Jake Barnes | | The Sun Also Rises (1926) | Ernest Hemingway | Catholic |
| 54 | Phoebe Caulfield | | The Catcher in the Rye (1951) | J.D. Salinger | Jewish Catholic; Scientologist |
| 55 | Janie Crawford | | Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) | Zora Neale Hurston | |
| 56 | Antonia Shimerda | | My Antonia (1918) | Willa Cather | Episcopalian |
| 57 | Grendel | | Grendel (1971) | John Gardner | |
| 58 | Gulley Jimson | | The Horse's Mouth (1944) | Joyce Cary | |
| 59 | Big Brother | | 1984 (1949) | George Orwell | Anglican |
| 60 | Tom Ripley | | The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) | Patricia Highsmith | |
| 61 | Seymour Glass | | Nine Stories (1953) | J.D. Salinger | Jewish Catholic; Scientologist |
| 62 | Dean Moriarty | | On the Road (1957) | Jack Kerouac | Catholic; Buddhism |
| 63 | Charlotte | | Charlotte's Web (1952) | E.B. White | |
| 64 | T.S. Garp | | The World According to Garp (1978) | John Irving | Christian background (lapsed as adult) |
| 65 | Nick and Nora Charles | | The Thin Man (1934) | Dashiell Hammett | |
| 66 | James Bond | | Casino Royale (1953) | Ian Fleming | |
| 67 | Mr. Bridge | | Mrs. Bridge (1959) | Evan S. Connell | |
| 68 | Geoffrey Firmin | | Under the Volcano (1947) | Malcolm Lowry | Methodist; Anglican; agnostic |
| 69 | Benjy | | The Sound and the Fury (1929) | William Faulkner | Presbyterian |
| 70 | Charles Kinbote | | Pale Fire (1962) | Vladimir Nabokov | Russian Orthodox |
| 71 | Mary Katherine Blackwood | | We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) | Shirley Jackson | |
| 72 | Charles Ryder | | Brideshead Revisited (1945) | Evelyn Waugh | Catholic |
| 73 | Claudine | | Claudine at School (1900) | Colette | |
| 74 | Florentino Ariza | | Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Catholic |
| 75 | George Follansbee Babbitt | | Babbitt (1922) | Sinclair Lewis | |
| 76 | Christopher Tietjens | | Parade's End (1924-28) | Ford Madox Ford | Catholic; agnostic |
| 77 | Frankie Addams | | The Member of the Wedding (1946) | Carson McCullers | |
| 78 | The Dog of Tears | | Blindness (1995) | Jose Saramago | Catholic; atheist |
| 79 | Tarzan | raised by gorillas | Tarzan of the Apes (1914) | Edgar Rice Burroughs | |
| 80 | Nathan Zuckerman | | My Life As a Man (1979) | Philip Roth | Jewish |
| 81 | Arthur "Boo" Radley | | To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) | Harper Lee | |
| 82 | Henry Chinaski | | Post Office (1971) | Charles Bukowski | |
| 83 | Joseph K. | | The Trial (1925) | Franz Kafka | Jewish |
| 84 | Yuri Zhivago | | Dr. Zhivago (1957) | Boris Pasternak | Jewish |
| 85 | Harry Potter | | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998) | J.K. Rowling | |
| 86 | Hana | | The English Patient (1992) | Michael Ondaatje | |
| 87 | Margaret Schlegel | | Howards End (1910) | E.M. Forster | |
| 88 | Jim Dixon | | Lucky Jim (1954) | Kingsley Amis | |
| 89 | Maurice Bendrix | | The End of the Affair (1951) | Graham Greene | Catholic |
| 90 | Lennie Small | | Of Mice and Men (1937) | John Steinbeck | Episcopalian |
| 91 | Mr. Biswas | | A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) | V.S. Naipaul | Hindu |
| 92 | Alden Pyle | | The Quiet American (1955) | Graham Greene | Catholic |
| 93 | Kimball "Kim" O'Hara | | Kim (1901) | Rudyard Kipling | Anglican |
| 94 | Newland Archer | | The Age of Innocence (1920) | Edith Wharton | |
| 95 | Clyde Griffiths | | An American Tragedy (1925) | Theodore Dreiser | Catholic; Congregationalist; Chrisitan Science |
| 96 | Eeyore | | Winnie the Pooh (1926) | A.A. Milne | |
| 97 | Quentin Compson | | The Sound and the Fury (1929) | William Faulkner | Presbyterian |
| 98 | Charlie Marlow | | Heart of Darkness (1902) | Joseph Conrad | Catholic; atheist |
| 99 | Celie | | The Color Purple (1982) | Alice Walker | Buddhist, Vegan |
| 100 | Augie March | | The Adventures of Augie March (1953) | Saul Bellow | Orthodox Jew (lapsed); Anthroposophist |