antagonist

Antagonist Definition

Antagonists (an-TAG-uh-nist) are characters who oppose the protagonist and create narrative conflict by challenging, obstructing, or confronting them. The antagonist can take many forms, including an individual character, a force, or a group or institution. Narrative conflict can also manifest internally within the protagonist, through antagonistic traits like pride or apathy.

Not all stories have antagonists, but an antagonist cannot exist without a protagonist. When an antagonist is present, the narrative’s plot, climax, and resolution revolves around the dynamic between these two characters.

The word antagonist hails from the Greek antagonistēs, meaning “opponent, competitor, or rival.”

Types of Antagonists

Antagonists are a plot device used to generate several forms of conflict. In man vs. man, the antagonistic force is another human character. In man vs. self, it’s internal—a trait, belief, or flaw that exists within the protagonist. The protagonist can also be confronted by nature, technology, fate, and so on. The following are common types of antagonists.

Villains

Villains are the most recognizable type of antagonist, and the traditional hero-villain dynamic has a deep literary history. This relationship is so enduring because it’s an explicit binary. The hero protagonist is clearly good, moral, and selfless, while the villain antagonist is clearly evil, immoral, and selfish. The White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a classic villain because she wants to take over Narnia and uses violence and manipulation to achieve it.

Ally Antagonists

Some antagonists start out as allies with heroic traits and noble intentions. But as the plot unfolds, they morph into antagonists. Betrayal is a common catalyst for this transformation. Other allies are antagonists in disguise, and the reveal of their ulterior motive or cross purpose adds drama and informs the climax. The film Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith includes examples of both. Protagonist Anakin Skywalker starts out a hero but betrays the Jedi and the Republic in the end, while Chancellor Palpatine is exposed as the main antagonist.

Gray Antagonists

Not all antagonists are evil. Some work against the main character until a crucial moment when they experience a change of heart and actually help resolve conflicts in the end. Other antagonists have a sympathetic backstory or motivation that reveals a kernel of goodness, despite their actions or behavior. Readers enjoy these complex antagonists because of their nuanced and authentic characterization.

Antagonistic Entities

Antagonists often feature as groups, societies, organizations, and governments. The protagonist versus society theme is common in dystopian and science fiction, including 1984, Brave New World, V for Vendetta, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. These antagonistic entities are often oppressive, corrupt, or otherwise immoral.

Nonhuman Antagonists

Antagonists don’t need to be human. Animals, creatures, monsters, and the supernatural make engaging and often terrifying antagonists. Some nonhuman antagonists personify abstract ideas, like death or fear of the unknown, while others are allegorical, like Godzilla, a monster that serves as an allegory about nuclear weapons.

Opposing Forces

Some antagonists are forces, like nature. The open sea is an antagonistic force in Life of Pi. Other antagonistic forces include technology or technological progress (such as SkyNet in the Terminator movies), fate (like the inescapable prophesy in Oedipus Rex), and time (every episode of 24 is framed as a race against the clock, before the case grows cold).

Internal Antagonists

Some narrative conflicts exist within the protagonist. Vices, virtues, flaws, mistakes, and other traits can all work against the hero. Internal antagonists are a key component of tragedies in which the protagonist causes their own ruin. Greed is the vice that undoes King Midas, who kills his daughter and starves to death due to his gift of golden touch.

How Writers Use Antagonists

Conflict gives a plot tension and intrigue. It piques our interest and holds our attention. The protagonist-antagonist dynamic is one plot device writers use to stoke conflict, heightening the drama by obstructing the hero’s journey. This conflict typically stems from a few motives:

• The antagonist wants to thwart the protagonist’s plan or progress.
• The antagonist has an opposing goal that pits them against the protagonist.
• The antagonist plans to achieve the same goal but through unheroic, possibly immoral methods.

The confrontation between the antagonist and protagonist can be explicit, revolving around a clear binary like good and evil. This is the case with the forces of Heaven and Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. However, narrative conflict can also arise from more subtle, ambiguous, or abstract origins. Guilt and self-hatred are the antagonistic forces in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, as the protagonist battles with fighting and surviving the Vietnam War.

While antagonists often serve as villains, not all antagonists are villainous or evil. The hero-villain dynamic is so traditional that it can be predictable, so writers use different types of antagonists to avoid clichés. Complicated antagonists are another way to avoid cliché. Round characters are more engaging and interesting than flat ones, and a complex, multifaceted antagonist can make their dynamic with the protagonist more distinctive and engaging.

Antagonists can also test the protagonist’s beliefs or morals. This emphasizes the protagonist’s personal character and integrity, making their traits, virtues, and motives even clearer to the reader. This is why antagonists make such great foils.

Antagonists and Related Literary Devices

Antagonists are often confused with other literary character types.

Antagonists and Antiheroes

Antiheroes share some traits with antagonists in that they’re not traditionally heroic. They tend be selfish, immoral, dishonest, or cowardly, and they’re motivated by self-interest rather than altruism, compassion, or justice. However, antagonists exist to oppose the protagonist, while antiheroes are protagonists who often come into conflict with antagonists of their own.

Like other protagonists, the antihero’s character arc drives the narrative forward—they must overcome obstacles to resolve the plot, and they generally to do the right thing, if for the wrong reasons. Characters like Jay Gatsby, James Bond, and Don Draper are well-known antiheroes.

Antagonists and Deuteragonists

Protagonists, antagonists, and deuteragonists are all concepts used to describe roles in ancient Greek drama. The protagonist is the main character, and the deuteragonist is the second-most important character. They are typically characters who help the protagonist achieve their goals through support and guidance. When the antagonist is the second-most crucial character to a story, then they fulfill the deuteragonist’s role.

Antagonists and Foils

Foils are characters who are contrasted with each other to emphasize their traits. Antagonists make effective foils because the difference between their traits and the protagonist’s is often especially stark. However, not all antagonists are foils. Any character can serve as a foil to the protagonist, whether as their sidekick, ally, mentor, or villain. In fact, a single story can feature several foils, including between secondary characters.

Antagonists in Pop Culture

Antagonists are powerful conflict-generators in all forms of media, and there’s no shortage of them in the various narrative mediums. Search for “pop culture antagonists,” and you’ll find dozens of lists ranking standout villains from literature, film, television, comics, and video games, including iconic characters like Lex Luthor, Hans Gruber, and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Count Dracula is a prime example of a pop culture villain—one of the most portrayed in history. Since debuting in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula in 1897, the character has featured in more than 200 films and TV shows, as well as comic books, video games, and other works of literature. The character’s enduring popularity is partly attributable to the timeless conflict between good versus evil, which Dracula embodies so alluringly.

But not every pop culture antagonist is explicitly villainous. The fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana, could be considered the primary antagonist in Parks and Recreation. Public servant Leslie Knope is devoted to her hometown, but Pawnee often resists her well-intentioned efforts to address its shortcomings. Several side characters embody specific antagonistic forces, like Councilman Jeremy Jamm, who represents the unproductive city government by obstructing Leslie at every turn, and the Saperstein siblings, who exemplify the town’s widespread sense of entitlement.

Disaster films are an entire genre built on conflict between humanity and natural disasters. The protagonists in Twister (1996) grapple against nature in the form of super-tornadoes. Deep Impact explores what would happen if a comet collided with the Earth. The characters in Volcano (1999) contend with a massive volcano erupting in Los Angeles. Nature generates the conflict in each of these films, as humanity struggles to survive these calamities.

Video games feature a distinct class of antagonists: bosses, or enemies designed to pose a greater threat as the player reaches climaxes in the game. These enemies are most common in story-driven games. There are several distinct categories—miniboss, superboss, and final boss—with each level presenting a respectively tougher challenge. The main antagonist typically appears as the final boss, the strongest and most difficult enemy, as Dracula does in the Castlevania game series.

Examples of Antagonists in Literature

1. J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians provides an example of an antagonist force, specifically colonialism. The novel is set in a fictional settlement backed by a nondescript Empire. The Magistrate—the protagonist and narrator—lives a peaceful existence, buying into the narrative that the nearby natives are dangerous and planning an imminent attack on the town. The Magistrate’s naivety is shattered by his discovery that the Empire manufactures conflict with the natives to enact brutal and unprovoked violence against them. The Magistrate realizes that the true antagonist is the colonial system.

2. William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

Coriolanus is a tragedy that pits a man against himself. Coriolanus is a Roman soldier renowned for his incredible deeds in battle. Brave and valiant, Coriolanus embodies Rome’s favored traits. He’s particularly adept at channeling his intense anger into remarkable feats of strength, and he prefers action and conquest over talk and compromise. When Coriolanus returns to Rome a military hero and runs for consul, winning the position handily, it’s expected that his military prowess will translate to politics. However, his aggression, ruthlessness, and single-mindedness become liabilities that make him an inept and even dangerous leader. Deposed and exiled, Coriolanus allies himself with Rome’s enemies, but he’s killed by Roman forces before he can exact his revenge. In the end, the virtues that served him so well in battle become antagonistic forces that lead to disgrace and death.

3. John Krakauer, Into the Wild

Nonfiction books can also include antagonists. Into the Wild combines biography and the travel essay to recount the life of Chris McCandless, a young man who adopted an itinerant lifestyle after graduating college. McCandless traveled across North America before hitchhiking to the Alaskan wilderness, where he aimed to live off the land. He was inspired by transcendentalism, which prizes self-reliance and believes that nature is inherently good. He survived more than 100 days before presumably dying of starvation. Nature proves to be an antagonistic force in this biography, as McCandless tested nature and failed.

4. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

The Hunger Games trilogy is a dystopian series about the corrosive effects of power and war. President Snow, the figurehead who embodies the story’s authoritarian regime, is the primary antagonist throughout most of the series. Mockingjay, the final novel, introduces President Alma Coin, the leader of the underground rebellion. She initially presents as a confident, magnetic leader, a good alternative to Snow. But as Coin gains power, she becomes increasingly arrogant, vengeful, and ruthless—an undeniable antagonist who’s no better than Snow.

Further Resources on Antagonists

Author Chris Fox discusses three rules to writing a great antagonist.

Word Hunter takes a deeper dive into villains, comparing villains and other antagonistic forces, and discussing how villains serve the plot.

Wikipedia details the history, characteristics, and types of video game bosses.

Related Terms

• Archetype
• Characterization
• Deuteragonist
• Foil
• Protagonist