Protector of the Pilgrim

Freed from the mountain by the bodhisattva Guanyin on the condition that he escort the monk Xuanzang to India for the Buddhist scriptures, Sun Wukong spends the rest of the novel as the pilgrimage's fighting strength and its least governable member. Guanyin fits him with a golden headband he cannot remove; when Xuanzang recites a particular sutra it tightens and drops the Monkey King to his knees, the only leverage a mostly powerless monk has over a companion who can level mountains. Across the journey Wukong fights demons, kings and rival immortals, argues constantly with the pig hearted Zhu Bajie and the placid sand spirit Sha Wujing, and is banished by Xuanzang more than once for killing an enemy the monk mistook for an innocent, only to be needed back within a chapter or two.

He completes the pilgrimage and is granted Buddhahood as the Victorious Fighting Buddha, the novel's reward for a character whose whole arc runs from cosmic rebellion to disciplined service without ever losing his temper, his pride or his loyalty. Beyond the novel he is a stock figure of Chinese opera and popular religion, invoked at some folk shrines as a guardian against evil, and his transformations, staff and cloud somersault remain some of the most reproduced images in East Asian popular culture down to modern film and television.