Character Protagonist and Antagonist
The relationship between plot and character is a vital and necessary one.
Without character, there would be no plot, and, hence, no story. For most
readers of fiction the primary attraction lies in the characters, in the
fascinating collection of men and women whose experiences and adventures
in life form the basis of plots of novels and stories in which they appear.
Part of the fascination with the characters of fiction is that we come to know
them well (perhaps at times too well). In real life we come to know people for
the most part only on the basis of externals- of what they say and what they
do; the essential complexity of their inner lives can be inferred only
after years of close acquaintance, if at all. Fiction, on the other hand,
often provides us with direct and immediate access to that inner life
– to the intellectual, emotional, and moral complexities of human
personality that lie beneath the surface.
When we speak of characters in terms of the text interpretation, we are
concerned essentially with three separate but closely connected
activities: 1) with being able to establish the personalities of characters
themselves and to identify their intellectual, emotional, and moral qualities;
2) with the techniques an author uses to create, develop and present
characters to the reader; 3) with whether the characters so presented are
credible and convincing. In evaluating the success of
characterization, the third issue is particularly crucial, for although the plot
can carry a work of fiction to a point, it is a rare work whose final value and
importance are not somehow intimately connected with just how
convincingly the author has managed to portray the characters,.
Naturally, such an evaluation can only take place within the context
of the novel or short story as a whole, which inevitably links
character to the other elements of fiction.
Characters in fiction
Although the terms person, character and figure are often used
indiscriminately, modern theoretical discourse makes an effort to be
more distinct and accurate.
A person is a real-life person; anyone occupying a place on the level of
nonfictional communication. Hence, authors and readers are persons.
A character is not a real-life person but only a “paper being”, a being
created by an author and existing only within a fictional text, either on the
level of action or on the level of fictional mediation.
The term figure is often simply used as a variation of “character”; however,
some theorists also use for referring to the narrator.
The term character applies to any individual in a literary work. For
purposes of analysis, characters in fiction are customarily described by their
relationship to plot; by the degree of development they are given by
the author, and by whether or not they undergo significant
character change.
The central character of the plot, i.e. protagonist is usually easy enough to
identify: he or she is the essential character without whom there would be no
plot. It is the protagonist’s fate (the conflict or problem being wrestled with)
on which the attention of the reader is focused. The character against
whom the protagonist struggles or contends is the antagonist. The
terms protagonist and antagonist do not, however, imply a judgment
about the moral worth of either, for many protagonists and antagonist
(like their counterparts in real life) embody a complex mixture of both
positive and negative qualities. For this reason then are more suitable
terms then hero, heroine, or villain which connote a degree of moral
absoluteness that major characters in great fictional works, as opposed, say,
to popular melodrama, simply do not exhibit.
The antagonist can be somewhat more difficult to identify,
especially if he is not a human being, as with marlin that challenges the
courage and endurance of the old fisherman Santiago in Ernest Hemingway’s
“The Old Man and the Sea”. In fact, as was intimated earlier, the antagonist
may not be living creature at all, but rather the hostile social or
natural environment with which the protagonist is forced to
contend, as with the war in the same Hemingway’s “Cat in the
rain”.
To describe the relative degree to which fictional characters are
developed by their creators, E.M. Foster distinguished between what he
calls flat and round characters. Flat characters are those who embody
or represent a single trait, or idea, or at most a very limited number
of such qualities. Flat characters are also referred to as type characters,
as one – dimensional characters, or, when they are distorted to create
humour, as caricatures. Fiction is full of such individuals, and they are almost
always immediately recognizable – by their mannerisms, by the recurring
words they utter. Those characters and their deeds are always predictable
and never vary, for as Foster notes, they are not changed by circumstances.
Flat characters are usually minor characters in the novels and stories
in which they appear, but not always so. For example, Montresor and
Fortunato are protagonist and antagonist, respectively, in Edgar Allan Poe’s
“the cask of Amontillado”. Yet they are both flat characters.
Round characters are just the opposite. They embody a number of qualities
and traits, and are complex in nature. They are multidimensional characters
of considerable intellectual and emotional depth who have the capacity of
grow and change. Major characters in fiction are usually round characters,
and it is with the very complexity of such characters that most of us become
engrossed and fascinated. The terms round and flat do not automatically
imply value judgments. Each kind of character has its uses in literature. Even
when they are minor characters, as they usually are, flat characters often
prove to be convenient devices to draw out and help us to understand the
personalities of characters who are more fully realized. Finally, round
characters are not necessarily more alive or more convincing than flat ones.
Characters in fiction can also be distinguished on the basis of whether they
demonstrate the capacity to develop or change as the result of their
experiences. Dynamic characters exhibit a capacity to change; static
characters do not. The degree and rate of character change varies widely,
even among dynamic characters. In some works, the development is so
subtle that it may go almost unnoticed; in other s, it is sufficiently drastic and
profound to cause a total reorganization of the character’s personality or
system of values. Change in character may come slowly and incrementally
over many pages and chapters, or it may take place with a dramatic
suddenness that surprises, and even overwhelms, the character. With
characters who fully qualify as dynamic, such change can be expected to
altar subsequent behavior in some significant way.
Dynamic characters include the protagonists in most novels, that by
virtue of their very size and scope provide excellent vehicles for
illustrating the process of change. So-called initiation novels, such
as “David Copperfield”, “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Great Gatsby”,
are examples.
Static characters leave the plot as they enter it, largely untouched
by the events that have taken place. A protagonist may prove to be
a static character as well, though it’s a comparatively rare case. For
the most part, an author creates static characters as foils to emphasize and
set off by contrast the development taking place in others.
