So far I'm up to Chapter 26 in my re-reading of Dickens' David Copperfield. (I read it many years ago, but thankfully I've forgotten most of it, so I'm discovering the wonderful story all over again.) One interesting thing I'm noticing is how 'ordinary', and perhaps even anti-heroic, the protagonist -- David -- is. He's just a typically confused, hesitant,  struggling boy -- young man now -- who's trying to find the right roads to walk in life. There's nothing extraordinary about him, which is perhaps what makes him such an engaging character. He definitely meets many extraordinary people, but maybe it's precisely his ordinariness that makes the others seem so outlandish. Because he's so ordinary, characters like Mr. Dick and Rosa Dartle seem exceptionally odd beside him.