Protagonist

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The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story.

The protagonist is also characterized by his/her ability to change or evolve. Although a novel may center around the actions of another character, as in Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener", it is the dynamic character that typically allows the novel to progress in a manner that is conducive to the thesis of the work and earns the respect or attention of the audience.

The protagonist is, it should be pointed out, not always the hero of the story. Many authors have chosen to unfold a story from the point of view of a character who, while not central to the action of the story, is in a position to comment upon it. However, it is most common for the story to be "about" the protagonist; even if the protagonist's actions are not heroic, they are nonetheless usually vital to the progress of the story. Neither should the protagonist be confused with the narrator; they may be the same, but even a first-person narrator need not be the protagonist. As they may simply be recalling the event while not living through it as the audience is.

The protagonist is often faced with a "foil"; that is, a character known as the antagonist who most represents or creates obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. As with protagonists, there may be more than one antagonist in a story. (Note that the term antagonist in this context is much more recent than the term protagonist, and rests on the same misconception as the use of protagonist to mean proponent. See below.)

Sometimes, a work will initially highlight a particular character, as though they were the protagonist, and then unexpectedly dispose of that character as a dramatic device. Such a character is called a false protagonist.

When the work contains subplots, these may have a different protagonist, which may differ from the main protagonist of the main plot. In some novels, the book's protagonist may be impossible to pick out, because the plots do not permit clear identification of one as the main plot, as in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, depicting a variety of characters imprisoned in and living about a gulag camp.

Contents

1 Usage

1.1 Protagonist or protagonists
1.2 Protagonist as proponent
1.3 Protagonist in psychodrama
1.4 Trivia

2 See also

Usage

Protagonist or protagonists

In an ancient Greek drama, the protagonist was the leading actor and as such there could only be one protagonist in a play. However the word has been used in the plural to mean 'important actors' or 'principal characters' since at least 1671 when John Dryden wrote "Tis charg'd upon me that I make debauch'd persons... my protagonists, or the chief persons of the drama" [link].

Protagonist as proponent

The use of 'protagonist' in place of 'proponent' has become common in the 20th century and may have been influenced by a misconception that the first syllable of the word represents the prefix pro- (ie. 'favoring') rather than proto-, meaning first (as opposed to deuter-, second, in deuteragonist, or tri-, third, in tritagonist). For example, usage such as "He was an early protagonist of nuclear power" can be replaced by 'advocate' or 'proponent' [link].

Protagonist in psychodrama

In psychodrama, the "protagonist" is the person (group member, patient or client) who decides to enact some significant aspect of his life, experiences or relationships on stage with the help of the psychodrama director and other group members, taking supplementary roles as auxiliary egos.

Trivia