I’ve read LotR many times. I identify with Gimli more than any other character. He seems more “human” than the other characters. He doesn’t have any super powers like the elves and Aragorn. Frodo and Sam don’t do it for me. Gimli gets the job done with courage and perserverence. Just wanted to know how common it is to identify with Gimli.
I do as well. He’s as big a bad-ass as Legolas or Aragorn, but without all the showboating or emo dithering. He just gets the job done with good humor and gusto.
I identify with that lame ass hobbit who gets carried around all the time.
Golem: Life would have been perfectly fine if you’d just let me sit in my cave with my treasures tucked all around me, but nooooo, you had to go and steal my stuff, wave it under the nose of some guy who wants to destroy the world, and make me get off my ass to chase after you before you throw my favoritest thing ever into a frickin volcano. I mean damn people, a VOLCANO? I thought we gave up on sacrificing virgins and food and treasures via volcano millenia ago. Get with it already!
I think that’s Pippin. He hangs out with the Ents while Merry hangs out with the Gondor people. Or do I have that backwards? He’s pretty much who I identify with, too. Someone who has no freaking clue what they’re doing and needs to be carried around by walking trees. Yup, that would be me.
I identify with one of those ents who don’t wake up during the whole thing. There are no women anymore anyway, who cares. I’m not gonna cancel naptime just because some guy became more colorful or whatever.
There is an interesting dwarf vs elf personality type “essay” in Cryptonomicon.
Being the engineer type, drawves to have some appeal. Thats what I play in LOTRO
Brian
Depending on context, I might be Éomer or Tom Bombadil.
Depending on context I’d probably be like Aragorn but with Elrond’s immortality and I’d ride a dragon.
I always assumed I’d identify mostly with the hobbits back in the Shire. It would work out great in the movie, in the books, not so much.
The Sharkey regime is brief, you’d get through. But it was an important element, sadly lost in the movie, because it was the industry, pollution and corruption of Isengard come home–probably one of the more personal parts of the story for JRRT.
I like the hobbit community very much, but I just can’t see myself as any kind of li’l folk. Too tall, too inclined to either wanderings or seclusion. I could be a Dúnadan I guess, but there aren’t really any character examples of them besides Aragorn.
Oh, the entwives just ran off to get their bark munched by the bearded dwarf women.
Of course, he should blame it on the ring.
I identify strongly with Aragorn. I have always identified with the hero.
Third drunk from the left, along the back wall of The Prancing Pony?
That’s me.
[nitpick]They both hung out with the Ents, and Pippin winds up in Gondor while Merry stays with the Rohirrim.[/nitpick]
Pippin has always been my favourite hobbit, and definitely the one I identified with. Originally I think because he was the youngest, and I was a kid the first time I read the books, but each subsequent reread has just increased my fondness for him.
I’m one of the shivering wretches taking sanctuary in Helm’s Deep.
No, they RUNNOFT. (Coen reference)
I never personally identified with any of the characters, although if I could choose one to be most like, it would definitely be Gandalf.
And if my favorite character had been Gimli, I think I might have been offended by the way the movie pretty much turned him into comic relief.
What, no love for Ghan-buri-ghan?
Tree hugging, bark munching druids never get the respect they so richly deserve. 
Since Elendil is mentioned in the Appendix, I’ll go with him.
That was what bugged me most about the movies. Gimli is stalwart, steadfast, and has a surprising depth when it comes to his appreciation of beauty. In the movies he was a buffoon. Unforgivable.
If Jackson had screwed up the Rohirrim as well, he’d have completely ruined the movies for me.