Fictional Characters as Anticipations of Adolescent Readers’ Dreams

The aim of this article is to look through the most attractive characters in books important to the contemporary Polish young adults. It concerns the ways young readers use, interpret and find the meaning in literature designed for them. The position of literary protagonist in the adolescent readers’ horizon of expectations has been described on the basis of values and attributes associated with enjoyable reading and books worth to recommend to readers’ peers. The analysis of spontaneous reading choices and characteristics pertaining to highly esteemed books formed the part of the results of nationwide adolescents’ readership survey conducted at the end of 2017. The article it is an attempt to answer the question: how adolescent readers engage with characters or entire books, how they could even become attached to them? There is discussion about the characteristics of a literary protagonist important in adolescent readers’ expectations of a satisfied reading, particularly in their axiological approach in interpreting literature and identification with literary protagonist and how they matter in reading engagement.