DOG-EARED CORNER - 2.1: Protagonists
Here’s a question:
What exactly is a PROTAGONIST?
Wing, that’s an easy one. “Protagonist” is just a word that means “main character”.
Okay, sure. I’m not going to split hairs with you here. “protagonist” means “main character”.
(Some argue otherwise, but it’s pretty telling that the only definitions for “main character” that are different from those given for “protagonist” come from people instructing on such a difference; anyone simply defining terms—like a dictionary—seems to use them interchangeably.)
So MAIN CHARACTER then
But there’s the rub. What makes a character MAIN?
Obviously, they’re the person (or thing) who the story is about. But how does a reader know? From where is this privileged position assigned? Are they just the character with the most screen time, as it were? The most ink between covers? Are they the first character to appear in the narrative? The last to survive? The one who does the most stuff?
Come on, Wing. You’re just coming up with arguments to shoot down. This isn’t hard. The protagonist is the character followed most closely in the story. The POV character, or if there isn’t one of those, the character the story puts the most focus on. There’s your answer. Done. Easy-peasy, let’s-get-sleezy.
Oh, how wrong you are, my dear Straw Man.
Obviously, the protagonist need not be the POV character (even when there is one). Many narratives, are told through the eyes of an observer character, who merely bears witness to the protagonist’s exploits. Dr. John Watson in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby spring immediately to mind. The Book Thief’s POV is Death itself, not Liesel who is inarguably the story’s protagonist.
As we’ve discussed in a post on Basic Point of View, POV isn’t about character; POV is about the relationship a story has between its reader, the characters, the narrator, and the plot. POV is how a story is framed; it doesn’t define the pieces within it.
Now, as for the second part of your answer: the character the story puts the most focus on:
Well, again … no.
What you’re describing is a Focal Character. (Typically, this is the same as the protagonist, but not always.)
A story can focus on a character who isn’t its protagonist, but is still its most interesting element. Phantom of the Opera is an excellent example of this; Christine is the protagonist, but the story’s focus is on the Phantom. Other non-protagonist focal characters include the monsters in both Dracula and Frankenstein. (Actually, a lot of stories about monsters, murderers and maniacs have non-protagonist focal characters.) The focal character is the one around whom the story is wrapped. Nobody, after all, decided they wanted to tell a story about a little boy named Elliott, and then wrote E.T.
A popular answer to this question is: the protagonist is the character who drives the story.
This might make sense. If a story’s about a character, you might also say, they’re the one who does the story. It’s an act they commit.
But is This true?
Does every protagonist drive their story? Or to put it another way: Can a story be about a character who mostly just reacts?
It’s generally not recommended. Writing teachers tend to frown on passive/reactive protagonists, but these certainly exist. You don’t have to look hard to find protagonists who drive little to nothing, and merely exist within their plots
Some Examples:
Wilbur the Pig – Charlotte’s Web
Rick Deckard (film version) – Blade Runner (Don’t scoff; he absolutely is.)
Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy
Chant – A Conspiracy of Truths
Dave Bowman – 2001: A Space Odyssy
Paul Hacket – After Hours
The Velveteen Rabbit – The Velveteen Rabbit
These works range from classic to contemporary, from story book, to academic tome, to gritty adult drama. Each is celebrated in its own milieu, yet each has a passive/reactive protagonist.
So no, protagonists do not have to drive the plot.
Fine, Wing. Just tell us already, will you?
We’re getting there, I promise, but first we must:
examine what a protagonist does
Take our example, Wilbur the Pig:
Through most of Charlotte’s Web, the reader carries one fundamental anxiety: Wilbur is in danger of being eaten. And through most the work, the character carries this same anxiety. Even at the end, though the anxiety shifts to How will Wilbur go on without his dear friend? it remains something shared by both reader and character .
So do you see what’s happening? The protagonist need not be a POV character, but they are the character through which the reader feels the story.
The protagonist carries the reader’s experience
But how?
For this, we must ask ourselves: what makes a reader care about a story?
If you have read my post What Makes a Story? you may recall we talked about the fundamental building blocks of any narrative: States (AKA Story Values). Simply put, a state is the way something is at a given moment in time. Cross-eyed is a state. Infinite is a state, as are imperilled, smelly, and climbing a ladder.
When we go from one state to another, we call this an event.
Now—as long as we’re picking at old wounds—in my post on Narrative Structures, we discussed the idea of The Quest (and its more potent cousin, Two Quests), in which the protagonist is recognized to pursue a Goal. This pursuit, this journey from an overall unwanted state to an overall desirable one is the Narrative.
Since not every state can be achieved, and since pursing a desirable state may lead to a spectacularly unwelcome one, whenever conflicting states exist, there is a tension between them. Will the overall desirable state be achieved? Or will it all turn to ashes? This tension engages the reader. It’s what makes them care about the story.
Establishing this, the answer to our question is easy.
So, what is a protagonist?
A protagonist is the point of tension between a narrative’s main conflicting states
The point of tension between conflicting states? Uummmm … doesn’t the protagonist have to be, you know, A CHARACTER?
Ah, my dear Rhetorical Device, you are correct. But you see, this point of tension is a character. Or, at least, when the change of states (event) is shown to matter (becomes a goal), the reader automatically empathizes with this point.
Let me direct you to yet another previous post, Defining Character. Here we found that a character is any component in the narrative in which the reader perceives desire or intent. They need not be sentient. They need not be alive. They need not actually have desire or intent, as long as the reader feels they do. So when tension exists between a desired and undesired state (AKA a protagonist), there is, of course, an implied preference for the desired state (AKA a character). The reader perceives a character wherever the point of tension falls. Even if they don’t have eyes, a mouth or chromosomes; even if it’s a nameless inanimate object, They are the protagonist. And so a character.
IMAGINE A STORY: There’s an old Minnie Mouse coffee mug belonging to an woman who’s had it for 45 years. One day the woman leaves it behind in a move. The house’s new owners find it, and use it for a few years, until one day the husband takes it to work and forgets it there. The company goes under and everything (including the mug) finds its way to a junk seller. One day, an antique dealer sees the mug and recognizes its value. She purchases it for next to nothing then sells it to a collector for thousands. She ships it on a boat, but there’s a terrible storm and the boat goes down. The mug sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where it remains forever.
This little story follows the journey of a small ceramic tube with a handle and a cartoon picture on it. Yet because it has implied desired and unwanted states (finding a home vs being lost), it treats the point of tension between them (the mug) as a protagonist. And because we as readers project the desirable state onto the mug, the narrative unquestionably treats the mug as a character.
So looking back:
YES, this point of tension carries the reader’s experience of the story, because every event is made up of the conflicting states in which it resides.
YES, the protagonist is typically active, because the ability to act, (and maybe screw it all up) tightens the tension, making for both a more interesting story, and a more tangible protagonist. But the tension can still exist on its own, and the protagonist can just be along for the ride.
YES, the protagonist is typically the focal character, because they’re in the centre of the conflict, but they don’t have to be; the focal character could represent one state or another, or be the motivation to change states.
YES, when there is a POV character, we often find them to be protagonist, because who better to see the conflict than the one dead in its centre. But again, not always.
And YES, last but not least, the protagonist is the main character because they aren’t just central to the conflict, narratively speaking, they ARE the conflict. Who else could the story be about?
what do we gain from this?
In understanding the NATURE of a protagonist, we are better able to see what we can DO with a protagonist.
Can a Story Have Multiple Protagonists?*
Of course. As discussed in previous posts, the narrative’s goal can shift over the course of the story. Sometimes it shifts to a new protagonist. We see this in Psycho, Revenge of the Sith and The Winter’s Tale.
Or, the goal may remain the same, but through movements in the plot, a new character finds themself in the point of tension between states. We see this happen in The Shining and The Babadook.
OR, there can be multiple protagonists at the same time—or rather, a group protagonist If the tension between desired and undesired states falls on a group rather than an individual, they are, collectively, the protagonist. We see this in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, as well as in Clue.
AND FINALLY, while the narrative may have one (or more*) main protagonists, there can be sections within it where different story values are present, and different tensions between them; these may be centred on a different character. This character is a temporal protagonist (though not the protagonist), a surrogate protagonist, because in that moment, they carry the weight of the conflict and the reader’s experience of the story.
*Stories can have more than one main protagonist. A Song of Ice and Fire, The Wheel of Time and Pulp Fiction all have multiple protagonists. Such stories, as with the kind mentioned in the above paragraph, have sections with different primary goals. Only here, two or more sections are given comparable weight in the narrative.
*NOTE: Many characters exist (and can exist) who elicits sympathy/empathy from the reader, but who are not a protagonist (i.e. folks ‘on the protagonist’s side’). Mostly narratives treat these as either extensions of protagonist (Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings) or mini/micro protagonists of their own subplots or arcs (Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings). Because these characters are in fact either connected to or structured as protagonists, for the purposes of this blog series, all sympathetic characters will be referred to as protagonists, from here on.
Does the Reader Have to Want what the Protagonist Wants?
No. The protagonist’s goal might be foolish. It might be self-destructive. It might even be evil. The reader doesn’t have to want it for it to draw tension. Think The Picture of Dorian Gray, Nightcrawler and Clockwork Orange. In some such stories the reader may perceive the desired state as horrendous; in others, it may be a state of little value, with nightmare consequences should they fail to achieve it. However it goes, the tension exists not in the reader’s sensibilities but in the conflict between states. This draws empathy from the reader—which is to say an understanding of the desire, not sympathy or approval--and the empathy always lands on the protagonist.
How do you make a reader care about your protagonist?
Well, Dear Reader, that’s up to you. Make your protagonist interesting by giving them unique quirks and characteristics. Flesh them out by giving them complex, nuanced emotions and thoughts. But if you want to make your reader care about what happens to your protagonist, make absolutely certain the conflict they are the heart of engages the reader, pulling them willing or unwilling to the final page, and the very last word.