< Determinator

Determinator/Literature

  • Paul in the New Testament practically exhorts all Christians to be determinators, especially in the face of persecution and/or death.
    • Paul was quite the Determinator himself: in response to critics claiming he wasn't a "good enough servant of Christ," he once listed off his own sufferings: "far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one [the maximum punishment the Jews were allowed to hand out under Roman law]. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." Yet he kept on going. The man just could not be stopped.
    • The widow in the Parable of the Unjust Judge.

In a certain town there was a judge who feared neither God nor man. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, "Grant me justice against my adversary." For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, "Even though I fear neither God nor man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me!"

  • Captain Ahab, from Moby Dick.
    • As the principal protagonist/antagonist of a classic that's now part of the "English Canon", his being quoted and alluded to in plenty of other works since easily makes him the Trope Codifier.
  • Edmond Dantès, aka The Count of Monte Cristo, is certainly worth a mention. After his betrayal he devotes his entire life to the pursuit of vengeance. Absolutely everything he does is somehow a step in his giant Xanatos Roulette designed to get his just revenge. He does settle down in the end, but by then he's pretty much accomplished everything he intended.
  • As far as I know... every single Dick Francis hero/narrator character. I'll just mention one: Sid Halley, who is tortured by a villain who destroys his crippled left hand, then threatens to destroy the right hand as well, the thing he most fears. Needless to say, he doesn't give up. And that's topped in a later book.
    • It should be mentioned, that Dick Francis wrote the Terminator novelisation.
  • The main character of the Sword of Truth series is described at least once as "the kind of man who would jump over a cliff to come after you". Which is either Too Dumb to Live or Determinator. Or possibly both.
  • Hawk and Fisher, the titular characters from Simon R. Green's books, are definitely up there as determinators. Despite being completely human, they're willing to go up against anything Haven can throw at them and stick to their principles. Usually while insisting they've seen worse.
  • Crowley in Good Omens speeds down a cursed highway in a burning car to Tadfield to prevent the Apocalypse, holding the car together with sheer force of will.
  • Most characters in Les Misérables:
    • Jean Valjean's prison sentence was originally five years. It slowly gets extended to nineteen because they keep adding on time every time he tries to escape... but he won't stop trying. After he gets out (and has a nice run in with The Messiah), he's such an insatiable do-gooder that he uses disguises to keep helping the poor even when half the police in Paris are breathing down his neck.
    • In an inversion of the stereotypical Determinator traits, he's so relentlessly pacifist (in the book) that when the Thenardiers' gang capture him, after breaking free and securing a red-hot iron as a weapon, he brands himself with it to show them that torturing him for information that might imperil Cosette would be useless. He then discards it, even though 1) his legendary strength would have been enough to take down the lot of them, and 2) it's virtually suicide to stay there. (In the book, they were amoral cutthroats that bear no resemblance to The Keystone Kops-esque bumblers in the musical.)
    • Inspector Javert: Despite the fact that they live in a time where recordkeeping and communications are so poor that it's laughably easy for someone to disappear just by moving to the next town, he chases the same convict across the country for decades. He only gives up after he cannot reconcile his mission with the fact that his prey has saved his life, and is in fact a good man.
    • Determinators have a pretty rough time of it, with the possible exceptions of Valjean and Javert - there's Eponine and her insane devotion to Marius (who's oblivious of her), the revolutionaries who stay at the barricade even after it's obvious it's become suicide, and Fantine, who keeps working to save her daughter despite losing her teeth, hair, human dignity, health, and eventually her life.
  • In The Wheel of Time, there are several instances.

Till shade is gone
 Till water is gone
Into the Shadow with teeth bared
Screaming defiance with the last breath

To spit into Sightblinder's eye on the Last Day

    • The extinct nation of Manetheren, who took this trope to absolutely crazy extremes. The Trolloc Wars devastate the world? The Red Eagle of Manetheren flies at the forefront of every battle against the Dark One's armies. The Manetheren army receives word while still on the field of battle that a massive Trolloc army has Manetheren in its sights and there's nothing they can do in time to save their home from a horrific fate? They march home faster than even their allies thought humanly possible and meet the army before it crosses the river into their territory. Said army includes a legion of Dreadlords and Ba'alzamon himself? Doesn't faze them one bit. Their aid from other nations (their one remote chance of surviving) is cut off by betrayal by the Amyrlin Seat? They keep on fighting, only crossing the river and burning its bridges when they don't have any more troops left to fight. They finally have to evacuate their beloved mountain city and flee because the Trollocs are at the gates? Some flee, but a huge part of the non-soldier population (most of which consists of farmers and shepherds with nothing but pitchforks) takes up the slack and rides out to fight the Trollocs in a titanic final battle. Every last one of them gets massacred? The Queen, fueled by her anger over the death of her beloved husband on the field of battle, nukes the entire Trolloc army with the One Power, destroying herself and the abandoned city in the process. The few survivors of Manetheren, rather than fleeing to other lands, decide to stay and rebuild what they can. Holy. Freaking. Crap.
    • The region becomes known as the Two Rivers, and these survivors, while forgetting their origins, are still determinators of the highest order. "We'll survive, the Light willing. And if the Light doesn't will it, we'll still survive."
    • They build their village on the spot their king fell. Talk about "We shall not be moved."
  • Roland of Gilead, the Gunslinger of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is determined to make it in spite of losing every friend he ever had, losing a few fingers and toes, and every old man's bane, arthritis.
  • Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy: Do whatever you want to this 4 feet 11 inches tall girl: strand her on a bed for one full year, beat her nearly to death, rape her in the most gruesome way you can imagine, attack her in the middle of a tropical storm, send half the Scandinavian police after her, shoot her in the head then bury her, she will get back and have her revenge no matter what.
  • Given the large number of books, it's no surprise that Discworld has featured several.
    • Big Fido of Men At Arms is a tiny poodle that rose up through the ranks of the feral dog population by being a small, fast, impossible to defeat, killing machine. The narration notes that you could have sandblasted him for five minutes and what was left 'still wouldn't have given up and you'd better not turn your back on it.
    • Then there are Zombies, who are literally fueled by their obstinate refusal to die. Reg Shoe is probably the shining example.
    • Vimes gets a couple of points here too. The man managed to outlive zombies, Trolls, and Golems in an alternate universe where the Watch was wiped out by Klatch. Not to mention killing two werewolves with his bare hands, getting taken off the list of acceptable targets by the Assassins' Guild (a move he was inclined to appeal), taking history by the throat and making it cry uncle...the man is the living embodiment of this trope!
      • THAT! IS! NOT! MY! COW! Vimes 1, Unstoppable Rage 0. That is where to bet the dollar, Drumknott.
      • Vimes has, at this point, undergone so many near-death experiences that he and Death are literally friendly acquaintances. It doesn't slow him down any.
        • Death has even pointed out that when this happens, Death must have a Near-VIMES experience. He's started to bring a book and a chair, since these tend to take a while.
    • Also, the Luggage. Yes, its sole purpose for existing was to carry luggage around in extra-dimensional space for its owner, and it was only armed with its own lid as a mouth, a big red tongue, and the hundreds of very short, very small feet it used to move around. But it has an amazing track record, fighting across multiple continents, along the bottoms of oceans, from the end of time to the beginning of creation (in that order), fighting with the incarnation of a God of madness, and smashing through an diamond opal shell that encased it.
      • Not to mention having twice followed it's owner (once for Rincewind and once for Twoflower) into a different UNIVERSE, followed Rincewind into the Dungeon Dimensions (outside any sort of universe entirely), and fought Cohen the Barbarian to a draw.
    • Granny Weatherwax. Once Granny Weatherwax has decided to do something, nothing will stand in her way. This is a good thing when it's "defend the kingdom" and what's in her way are The Fair Folk. It's a bad thing when it's "fly this broomstick in a straight line", and what's in her way are trees.

"If I've got a fault," she said, contriving to suggest that this was only a theoretical possibility, "it's not knowing when to turn and run. And I tend to bluff with a weak hand."

  • The protagonist of half of John Steakley's novel Armor joins the military in a Bug War. This leads to him being in scout armor (weaker than standard issue) in a mission gone very wrong. He's the only person to survive the mission, which, due to a processing error, means he gets sent on every single high casualty raid against the bugs. He doesn't quit. He doesn't complain. He doesn't die. He just kills. Over and over again, eventually devoting a whole mental subroutine to living through constant war.
  • The Deliverators from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash will get you your pizza pie within thirty minutes or else the head of the corporation will fly down by helicopter and personally apologize for wasting your time, offering your family free tickets to Sicily at a luxury resort for compensation. Needless to say, they do not give up lightly. Of course, considering that they work for Cosa Nostra Pizza, and given their boss's original full time occupation, I would not want to cause him to be 'inconvienced' either.
  • Fëanor, from The Silmarillion, who has a dying vision that the Noldor will never defeat Morgoth, and tells his sons to keep their oath to take back the Silmarils at all costs anyhow. His sons die too early or break down at the end.
    • And that was after he got himself - and his followers - banned from Valinor for the actions they took in pursuit of the Silmarils. The Feanorians' Oath was basically to be unfettered Determinators about getting the Silmarils back. Which they sort of do, eventually. They only really break down after learning that it was all for nothing.
    • Morwen from The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin is a more benign example of this trope, but is nonetheless a Determinator. Her determinator tendencies especially come to light when she insists on going to Nargothrond to look for her son in spite of the advice and caution of others.
    • And Morgoth of course, who keeps fighting even after his orcs, Balrogs and dragons are defeated and he's cornered in his dungeons.
    • Beren as well, who was determined to marry his love, even if the father sends him to an impossible quest as a condition.
  • Speaking of JRR Tolkien, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli's pursuit of the orc band who kidnapped Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings shows that they have a bit of The Determinator in them as well. And then there's Samwise Gamgee, a simple gardener and loyal friend/servant/batman to Frodo.
    • What about Frodo and Gollum? Sam persevered because he still had hope, Frodo had no hope and yet still went doggedly on.
  • Villain Protagonist Knight Templar head of the Guardian Service Operations Headquarters General and Colonel Stanis Alexander Rashid Trastamara from Yulia Latynina's Inhuman, just after an insanely odds-defying assassination of the Evil Prince and escape from his fortress:

It was not as though Stanis thought he could get away. It was just a matter of principle: don't give up before someone fries your head with a laser, and don't do it yourself. This, after all... was the difference between him and the poor terrorist he stopped [at the spaceport by tackling him immediately upon noticing the mark of a symbiont, despite himself having broken legs from a recent botched operation and disabled prosthetics]. He did not seek death. He sought victory.

  • Raistlin Majere of Dragonlance was willing to sacrifice anything for his goal - his brother, his love, his health, his sanity, his life. By the way, his goal? To defeat and replace the gods.
  • Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, once he had his target in sight. His "overdeveloped sense of vengeance" drove him onward to a truly iconic Crowning Moment of Awesome. Yet he was an amateur compared to Westley, whose modus operandi was always "Do whatever it takes, even if I have to work ten times harder than a normal person or become better than the best, and reach my goal no matter how impossible." Admittedly, even he almost gave up in face of the impossible mission of Storming the Castle, but that was before he heard they had a wheelbarrow at their disposal.
  • Corwin, from Roger Zelazny's Book of Amber series. In the first book he fights his way up a thousand-foot staircase packed with enemy soldiers. Though he is overpowered, captured, starved, and has his eyes burnt out of his head, he eventually gets better and escapes. While still emaciated and weak he encounters an injured man threatened by monsters; he kills the monsters, builds a cairn over the dead with hundred-pound stones, then runs for a day and a night while carrying the wounded man in his arms, without pausing to rest. After that, he stops slacking off.
  • Khalifa in Bones of the Hills pursues the Mongol expeditionary force across approximately 150 miles of desert, during which time several horses on both sides die and the Mongols' and Arabs' eyes are rubbed red by dust. Unfortunately for him, Jochi and Jebe paced themselves to always remain just outside the range of the Arabs' bows so that, when dawn broke, the Mongols could turn around and more easily pick off the slightly less tired Arabs. When this happened, Jebe ordered their Chinese conscripts to move to the back line, but Shu Ten proved his determinator credentials by begging the generals to let his men fight on the front lines despite not having the toughness or endurance that comes from growing up in the steppes.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe was aware that fans liked Boba Fett enough that he couldn't just be left to die ignominiously. So how did he escape something that preserves and digests victims over the course of millenia, trapping them in their own and each other's memories, while keeping them entirely immobile? With great difficulty. Go to And I Must Scream and ctrl-f "Sarlacc".
    • Supreme Commander Pellaeon is an interesting aversion. Despite being on the side infamous for a wasteful blaze-of-glory Last Stands every time they're defeated, he holds the remnants of the Empire together even as the odds get increasingly desperate. But he does so by having incredible patience, not by being the antithesis of patience.
  • Tom Purdom's novella "Bank Run" includes "purpose-conditioned" mercenaries, psychologically programmed to be Determinators.
  • Bud White spends years investigating a series of prostitute killings only he believes to be connected. When he finally gets his man and beats him to death despite suffering massive injuries in the process, "Bud White refused to die. (...) He survived massive shock, neurological trauma, the loss of over half the blood in his body."
  • From the Warhammer 40,000 Last Chancer's novels comes Colonel Schaeffer. He and his personally chosen squads of felons and prisoners are given the most dangerous, desperate and vital missions the Inquisition can come up with. He's been run over by a tank, had his eyes cut out, shot uncounted times and gotten into fist fights with daemons. The Mechanicus has kept him alive for over 300 years by adding new parts to him whenever the old ones get shot off. To quote one of the men under his command, 'He has never failed'.
  • Darkfur in Ghost Hunter. She fights an eagle owl, survives a fall from a cliff into a river, travels through an ice-storm in the (literally) freezing rain, treks over an icy wasteland - all the while with a nasty injury on her leg, and all in the name of rescuing her cub Pebble.
  • In Mossflower, Martin the Warrior fits this trope perfectly. After being repeatedly savaged by a wildcat and being knocked down time after time, this mouse keeps rising back up to fight some more, refusing to just lie down and die.
  • Miles Vorkosigan of the Vorkosigan Saga has this approach to pretty much anything he sets his mind to. Four foot nine inches tall, with brittle bones, he really wants to go into the army. Aged seventeen, he undergoes a Training from Hell in order to be allowed to try the physical... and breaks both his legs a few minutes in. A normal person would choose another career at this point. Miles... finds a side entrance. And later, when he asks someone to marry him... he always tries again when he gets a refusal. From three different women. In one case, repeatedly over the course of several years. Just as well the man has charm.
  • Scarlett O'Hara.
    • Melly has her moments too, when it comes to defending Scarlett.
  • Meyer Landsman, the hard-boiled detective protagonist of The Yiddish Policemens Union is shot, gets the crap beaten out multiple times, chased through the snow in his underpants, suffers withdrawal, and faces a lot of emotional and political turmoil on a case he shouldn't even be investigating.
  • Bigwig from Watership Down. His Chief Rabbit told him to defend that run, and he's going to damn well do it until the Chief tells him to stop!
    • In the process, he sends packing in fear a rabbit who is rumoured to be Death's first cousin.
  • Roran of the Inheritance Cycle, a man whose determination carries him to accomplish almost ludicrously extreme feats. When his village becomes condemned by The Empire, he uses his potent charisma to convince his people to flee their homes and travel from the northern tip of Alagaesia to the sun-drenched country of Surda in the far south, avoiding Galbatorix's troops all the while. He joins the Varden, kills the Twins (two extremely powerful magicians) with his hammer, slaughters 193 enemy soldiers in one go, survives being given 50 lashes to the back by Nasuada for insubordination and is up and fighting again a few days later, journeys across Alagaesia to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend from the mountain lair Helgrind, wrestles a battle-crazed urgal to the ground until the beast surrenders and acknowledges Roran as the stronger, and rises his way up to a commander in the Varden after only a couple of months of service. And he does this all without any magic whatsoever. Yeah, Eragon doesn't look so impressive next to that, does he?
    • Not to mention the men with no pain.
  • Ethan Gage from William Dietrich's books Napoleon's Pyramids and The Rosetta Key. No matter what his enemies throw at him, he manages to survive it, including dangling him over a pit of snakes, burying him up to his neck in the middle of the desert and sending an entire (Napoleonic) French military brigade after him. His enemies ask him whether or not he is immortal on several occasions, Including Napoleon right before his planned execution
  • Victor Cachat from the Honor Harrington series. If he wants something, no biggie - but if he decides something is in the best interests of the Republic, it's going to happen, regardless of the cost.
    • Honor herself.

It was a merciless something, her "monster" - something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not - could not - relent or rest.

    • Treecats generally are described as having two kinds of enemies - those who have been dealt with appropriately, and those who are still alive.
  • Lloyd Douglas' The Robe characterized the Jewish people as this. A disgruntled Roman soldier remarks that 'A Jew will climb out of his grave and continue to fight.' Given the repeated Jewish Rebellions he had a point.
    • Also, in a Real Life Ur-example, the Zealots were such strong Determinators that the word for "uncompromising in pursuit of their ideals" is named for them.
  • Ben Hanscom in IT, in his story of how he lost weight.
    • Also Bill Denbrough in his quest to get revenge for his brother's murder.
  • It sucks to be Harry Dresden. It's a good thing he's Made of Iron, since by the time the final confrontation has rolled around, he's nearly always in no condition to be walking around, much less fighting the book's Big Bad. By the end of Dead Beat, for example, he's been kicked around by Cowl, Mind Raped by Corpsetaker, had a shuriken lodged in his leg, beaten to within an inch of his life with a chain, bitten by snakes, and knocked out with a blow to the head, and the only reason he can even move is because he's blocking out the pain. He still finds the resolve to REANIMATE A TYRANNOSAURUS and fight his way through a horde of zombies, two necromancers, and a ninja ghoul.
    • Miss Gard. She is quite literally disembowelled and proceeds to stuff her own guts back where they belong and seal the wound shut with superglue. Even Harry is somewhere between impressed and "Oh my God, stop that" horrified watching her do it.
  • The Golden Oecumene often seems to be an experiment in how much can be taken away from one character while keeping it plausible that he'd remain sane. At his lowest, protagonist Phaethon has lost every single thing he's ever had, including his reputation, and fights alone against a conspiracy that everyone else believes is all in his head. Tellingly, the first time the narrative really lets up on him is when it takes another character, Atkins, and has him temporarily convinced he's Phaethon. Formerly portrayed as The Stoic, he's reduced to sobbing and begging before an artificially induced Snap Back.
    • Except that the sobbing and begging is because he wants to STAY Phaethon. Which invites the question: if it's that hard to be Phaethon, then, just how much worse must it be to be Atkins?
  • Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox? I do not like Green Eggs and Ham! I will not eat them, Sam-I-Am!!!
  • Kariya Matou from Fate/Zero, he really tried so damm much to save the daughter of the woman he's loved from Fate Worse Than Death
  • Many in The Malazan Book of the Fallen, but one of the standouts has got to be Spinnock Durav, who spends an entire night duelling against fellow Determinator and Villainous Badass Grandpa Kallor. Spinnock never has a chance, yet he repeatedly gets up, despite everything Kallor does to him, all because his master asked him to ensure that the former High King never reached the city of Darujhistan. He succeeds, despite never landing a blow on Kallor, all because he's too stubborn to fall down. Kallor himself shows off his Determinator status in the same book, fighting his way through Spinnock and a freaking Dragon in his efforts to reach the city. At the rate he's going Implacable Man may not be too far off.
  • Bolos, full stop.

Bolos might fail. They might die and be destroyed. But they did not surrender, and they never — ever — quit.

  • This wouldn't normally be applicable to a character who just tries to survive, but Eliezer just will not. Give. Up. The book shows both the good and the bad sides of this, as he becomes more willing to abandon others to save himself.
  • Animal Farm: Boxer will build that goddamn windmill or die trying. Of course, in the end, the latter came true.
  • Artemis Fowl Series: Opal Koboi.
    • Leon Abbot too.
  • The Railway Series: Edward, Skarloey, and Rheneas all demonstrate this trope. In chronological order:
    • Skarloey and Rheneas' railway is on extremely hard times. Skarloey is out of commission, leaving Rheneas to do the entire workload. Rheneas is in little better condition than his brother. One rainy day, he is traveling home with an overloaded train (there are even passengers in the Guard's van). Out on the loneliest part of the line, his valve gear on one side jams, leaving him with only one good cylinder. Neither this nor the storm-slicked rails stop him from getting the train to the station. Had he failed the railway would have closed. Instead his valor earns the Skarloey Railway praise and good publicity, beginning to turn its fortunes around.
    • A few years later, after Sir Handel and Peter Sam arrived and while Rheneas is away being overhauled, Peter Sam being repaired in-house and damage to Sir Handel's wheels create quite the dilemma. Skarloey volunteers to pull the train in spite of his decrepit condition. On the return journey, a spring in his frame breaks, but he manages to bring the train home. James, who had been impatiently waiting for Skarloey, swallows his irritation and leaves in respectful silence after collecting his passengers. Skarloey is also sent off for an overhaul.
    • Edward manages to bring a train home in spite of a broken crank pin.
  • Red Storm Rising: The captain of the merchant vessel Julius Fucik, which is used by the Soviets to sneak troops into Iceland, valiantly stays at his post to guide the ship into harbor even as he bleeds to death from wounds sustained from 20mm cannon rounds, refusing all but the barest minimum of medical attention until his task is finished.
  • Many characters in A Song of Ice and Fire fit this trope, especially Balon Greyjoy, Catelyn Stark, Daenerys, and Lord Varys. It is brutally deconstructed in the form of Brienne of Tarth, who would love to give up her quest, return her Cool Sword, and go home to her family... but won't, because she gave her word. By the fourth book she's got some fairly major psychological trauma and her determinator characteristics may have led to her death.
    • Stannis Baratheon, a man unloved by even his own brothers and the smallest army in the War of Five Kings, is by far the most determined with not even murdering his own blood or devastating defeat not being enough to cool his ambition of becoming the King, because it is his by right.
  • Tortall books by Tamara Pierc
    • Keladry of Mindelan is not called " The Protector of the Small" by a handful of deities for nothing. If she has breath in her body, she will protect her people- no matter if that means risking having to re-do her long and grueling page years to save her maid, or going after a group of kidnapped children( and their 150 well armed kidnappers) with less than 20 men, some birds, a cat and a few dogs. If someone is under her protection, Kel is not going to stand around and wait for a miracle, she's gonna be that miracle or die trying, and no one's gonna talk her out of it.
    • Beka Cooper of the City Guard is not called Terrier in her first appearance for nothing either. She WILL find the answer to the deadly mysteries that come into her beat, and despite her training partners' best attempts, she forgets when to back down.
  • Deconstructed in Paradise Lost. Humanity can't return to the Garden of Eden specifically because Satan refuses to give up. Interestingly, Satan's status as a determinator has convinced a number of people that he's the actual hero of the story.
  • Same writer, different series as the above, Briar Moss in his book from the Circle of Magic quartet. He will not let his mentor die, even if that means following her into the afterlife and convincing her to come back.
  • Nathan Price from The Poisonwood Bible. He preached baptism in a river filled with crocodiles.
    • Well, by that point he was certifiably batshit. However, it was definitely his Determinator tendencies that brought him to that point: he dragged his entire family off to the Belgian Congo to be missionaries, even though the missionary agency would not approve his mission and gave them virtually no financial support, and stubbornly stayed on, doggedly trying to convert the entirely uninterested and frequently hostile locals. This all through the violence before, during, and after the Congo gained independence, through the death of his youngest daughter and being abandoned by his wife and three remaining daughters, and being driven to live alone in the jungle by the locals, who'd had just about enough of him.
    • Orleanna, Nathan's wife, is also the Determinator, with her fight first to keep her family alive in the Congo, then to get them the hell out. Two of her daughters, Adah and Leah, also develop into impressive Determinators. Apparently it's a family trait.
  • If you think about it, the Tortoise from "The Tortoise and the Hare" is this. Despite the fact that it seemed hopeless right from the start, the tortoise just keeps going and ended up winning the race.
  • Dicey in Homecoming. At the age of 13, leads her 10-, 9-, and 6-year-old siblings, homeless and walking much of the way, from Massachusetts to Maryland. She keeps them together, keeps them fed, and keeps them moving. To paraphrase another character later in the series, "Look it up on a map."
  • Time Scout: Do not mess with Skeeter Jackson's adopted family. He will spend sleepless days hunting you down through the bowels of the earth. He will hunt you down to the ends of time. He will face a storm of bullets, sprint across London, and leap a river of molten bronze. And then he'll offer you a Sadistic Choice.
    • Similarly, Lupus Mortiferus *will* get back his money. And his revenge.
  • Elijah Beckett from The Corsay Books is a textbook example, doggedly doing his physically-demanding and spiritually-draining duty despite debilitating illness and a growing narcotic addiction.
  • The Do-Gooders in Audrey Wait continued playing at their gig even after the ceiling collapsed. Their first offer from a label turns out to be a sham, but they push through until they get another offer from another label.
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Jack Emery and Ted Robinson become these as the series goes on. Both of them are told to their faces that the are obsessed with arresting the Vigilantes and to just give it up. Jack gives up and starts helping out the Vigilantes in The Jury. Ted gives up and starts helping out the Vigilantes in Collateral Damage.
  • Walker Boh of The Heritage of Shannara and The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, takes one beating after another, but never ever gives up. Whether it's cutting off his own arm to make an escape, facing down one of the True Fae, refusing to let the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse keep him trapped in Paranor, killing the Big Bad after having been swarmed by dozens of his minions, or surviving for half a book with a fatal wound and not only killing the Disc One Final Boss that did it to him, but redeeming one of the other villains in the process, Walker cannot be stopped. His predecessor, Allanon was also something of a determinator, but Walker takes it to new heights.
    • The Warlock Lord was such a determinator that he managed to cheat death by convincing himself he could not die.
  • Roy Merritt from Daemon has this as his defining personality trait. Video of him successfully breaking into a death-trap-filled mansion while on fire gets passed around the Darknet for years, earning him the name Burning Man. Mind you, the darknet is the network built by the system Merritt was fighting against - his determination is so impressive even his enemies are in awe.
  • The defining personality trait of Richard Hannay from The Thirty-Nine Steps, both mentally and physically. Need someone to walk into wartime Germany, find out their secret weapon, evade capture while staggering through the snowy woods in winter with a fever, and foil the villains' evil plans long after anyone else would have given up in exhaustion or succumbed to exposure? Richard Hannay is your man.
  • Harry Potter: No love for Lord Voldemort? Even with his last best lieutenant dead, Harry having refused to die yet again, his Horcuxes destroyed and the Elder Wand refusing to obey him, he just keeps fighting. Pride of course, comes before the fall.
  • Matteo Ta'anari of Someone Elses War is the ultimate determinator. He loses his parents and his little brother, his home, his religion is compromised, he gets shot through the throat, becomes claustrophobic, sustains burns to 90% of his body, is rendered deaf-mute...and still keeps trying to free his friends from the Lord's Resistance Army. Without violence. And succeeds.
  • Andre Norton's Star Rangers[1] opens with the story of a Roman legion ordered to march east "to the end of the world."

And so a thousand men vanished into the hinterland of the largest continent, to be swallowed up forever. On some unknown battlefield the last handful of survivors must have formed a square which was overwhelmed by a barbarian charge. And their eagle may have stood lonely and tarnished in a horsehide tent for a generation thereafter. But it may be guessed, by those who know of the pride of these men in their corps and tradition, that they did march east as long as one still remained on his feet.

  • A Certain Magical Index: Touma is surprisingly tenacious against overwhelming opponents. Even when he knows he is outclassed and his power can't help him, he charges in anyway just to prove a point, and because he's the hero. It's taken Up to Eleven when he fights Othinus. Othinus can literally reshape the entire universe to her liking, and puts Touma through a series of hellish worlds covering all possible forms of suffering. The first one has everyone else in the world, including his parents, wanting him dead. While this does eventually break him, he regains the will to fight with encouragement from someone else, and challenges Othinus again. Despite being killed innumerable times, he keeps going, to the point that Othinus starts breaking down from the effort of killing him so many times. Eventually, he manages to talk her into a Heel Face Turn.
  • The Little Engine That Could. Basic plot of the story (which varies Depending on the Writer): a stranded train has to get supplies (sometimes toys for children, sometimes perishable supplies) up a mountain (maybe in a storm to make it worse and usually within a limited amount of time) but every engine that passes by (each treated as living beings) is too busy, too self-centered, or too old and tired to even try. Finally, the youngest and smallest engine decides to at least make the attempt. Despite straining under the heavy load, it repeats to itself "I think I can, I think I can" until it succeeds.
  1. ↑ Alternate title The Last Planet
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