NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/writing/3602

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 4.1 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Fred Welden)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re:    What is an antagonist?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Nov 92 15:23:16 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]>, Jon L. Campbell <[e-mail]> writes:
|Fred Weldon writes that a story doesn't necessarily need an antagonist.
It's Welden.  And while I'm up, Crawford Kilian has only one "l" in
his last name.  I know, spelling flames are a no-no, but you really
ought to get people's names right.

|   I suppose that this is true, but ask:  What really is an antagonist?

Our local xwebster defines antagonist as "one who contends with or
opposes another," plus a bunch of definitions from physiology (as in
atropine being a morphine antagonist.)

|[Describes a story about a man who seems to be sliding into alcoholic
|ruin.]
|
|     Fairly boring plot so far, but has anyone identified the antagonist?
|Even if the story progressed to the point that he returns to work without
|permission and gets into a conflict with his boss, the antagonist isn't
|necessarily his boss.  Then who or what is the antagonist?  > Booze?
|
|   I don't know if booze could be called the antagonist, but unless the
|story has no conflict or element of conflict then shouldn't there be an
|antagonist somewhere?  If the word antagonist is a noun, then woudn't it
|be reasonable to suggest that every instigator of a conflict is an
|antagonist in disguise?

1) The booze is not opposing the actions of the protagonist, nor is it
contending with him.  Unless the author personifies it, the booze isn't
doing anything at all.  It isn't a character in the story.

2) As I said before, given sufficiently powerful analytical tools you
can force any story into the protagonist/antagonist mold, but in doing
that you might well squeeze all the juice out of it.  You haven't even
considered the possibility that the reader might be the antagonist, or
maybe the editor is, or the typesetter!

|   Like I said before, Imagine a story where you believe there isn't
|a clearly identifiable antagonist and apply a simple test.  Look for the
|conflict, if there is one, and pick out the instigator in the conflict.
|That person, place, or thing may be the antagonist in disguise, but
|could be cleverly hidden.  Even in a story where there is a serial
|killer as the central character there could be a hidden antagonist
|lurking in the shadows.  Say that the serial killer (she this time) is
|the protagonist and we follow her development in the story.  From the
|first murder through reconciliation (resolution/denouncement) with her
|inner self.  We follow her as she denounces her actions and seeks to find
|a way to end her abusive behavior.  She recognizes that what she does is
|wrong and must find a way to stop.  If this story is a clearly identified
|path of causual events that lead to a climaxtic closure as I suppose most
|stories do, then would it not be reasonable to suggest that her victims
|are the antagonists?  Even in a story where we treat the killer with such
|sympathy and agree that the actions of the killer were warranted from their
|point of view, wouldn't the victims then become the antagonist?

I suggest the following exercise.  Imagine that you are constructing a
lengthy post posing a bunch of questions about what might constitute the
antagonist in various kinds of stories.  Imagine that you suggest that
anything or anyone in the story might be an antagonist, even if they do
nothing that seems particularly antagonistic.  Now apply this simple
test: try to explain to yourself what possible difference it could make
whether every story had an antagonist like that or not?  What possible
meaning is left for the word "antagonist?"

--
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  [e-mail]
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |