Now, I store each character in a node by using the new Character() wrapper class. When I pull out values from my queue, i can't cast them as characters.
Well, you have two options. You can use autoboxing, but it will need some help. It doesn't know that it is a Character object, so you will need to cast it to a Character object and let autoboxing take care of the rest. Like so...
Or you can take care of the unboxing yourself -- after all, you boxed it with Character wrapper class yourself.
Henry