What Makes Antagonists Work?

Even evil needs a why.

What is an antagonist?

A character in a story that works vehemently in opposition to a happy ending? Maybe.

A force of evil that seeks to suppress the protagonists light? Meh.

A hell-borne plot device an author uses to attain deeper access to the protagonists psyche? Too much.

Let’s keep it simple for now. As a primary teacher, I tell my kids that the antagonist is ‘the bad guy’. It’s Scar from The Lion King, Joker from Batman, The Terminator from, well, The Terminator (although I’d hope my students aren’t yet acquainted with that particular example).

These examples, among many other, have become cultural icons. As were focussed on the craft of writing, here’s some literary antagonists that have, and continue to, illicit discussion, years or even decades after publication: Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), Count Dracula (Dracula), Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) and the infinitely complex Jack Torrance (The Shining).

What, then, allowed these characters to make the dizzying leap from ink-on-a-page to household names?

The answer: we can relate to them. In some deep, dark recess of our brain, we recognise something in an effective antagonist as us. Of course, we’d never admit that aloud. And we mightn’t even recognise it, but the authors behind these characters do, and have a subtle way of access our subconscious that is terrifying in and of itself.

I hear you: how in the hell does anyone relate to Patrick Bateman? Are we talking about the same guy? The narcissistic, sociopathic serial killer, right?

Right. And I’d hope none of you relate to him for those specific traits. But when we delve deeper, we see a man engrossed with self-image. The suit, the skincare routine, the hyper-fixation on his business card (let’s see Paul Allens!) A man obsessed with status and aesthetics in an environment that feeds on comparison. A man who, despite his success, uses distraction (pleasure, routine, media) as a vehicle to escape his inner turmoil. A man at war with his own masculinity.

When we compare this to our current world, it’s shockingly similar to some of the challenges that some may face. Curating a self-image fit to be deemed ‘normal’ or ‘successful’ has been an uphill battle many have faced in an age of social media, micro-influencers and online business. There’s no coincidence that Bateman, birthed-on-page in 1991 (34 years ago) has had a resurgence of readers, viewers and, dare I say it, fans. The masses can relate to a character, albeit a murderer, whose focus on sculpting an exterior image ultimately carves a hollow interior within him. To read (or watch) American Psycho in the current day is told a mirror to ourselves. And although we don’t like what we see, we can’t quite look away.

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Fine, you say. But that was lightning in a bottle. There was no way Bret Easton Ellis could’ve predicted a rise in social media and a total upheaval of society as we know it. What about Jack Torrance from The Shining? Murderer, drunk, abusive father and husband… the list goes on. How on God’s Green Earth could we possibly relate to him?

Well, it’s contextual. Stephen King brought Jack Torrance to life in 1977. Almost fifty years later, that image of Torrance smiling through the splintered door (here’s Johnny!) lingers across all realms of media. An especially effective rendition of the character by Kubrick, and a now revered performance by Nicholson, helped solidify the character on the horror-lovers Mount Rushmore. Nonetheless, the gruelling mental labour of Stephen King was what laid the foundations, and then some.

The Shining emerges in a world still shaken with post-Vietnam disillusionment. Intergenerational trauma, as we know it today, was seldom acknowledged. Mental health support was in it’s infancy. Boys cry too? No, they don’t. And so families were left to pick up the pieces in a society rotten with abuse, alcoholism, PTSD and a general sense of man-the-hell-up.

King writes Torrance as a cautionary tale. His slow descent into madness and eventual murder is a byproduct of four things:

1. an over-reliance on alcohol as a coping mechanism.

2. childhood abuse suffered on his own account, which festers in him now like some hereditary disease.

3. the pressure to be the ‘breadwinner’ in his family (because men provide, and that was the bottom line).

4. isolation. No means of support.

All of which, during the time of publication, would’ve cut a little too-close to the bone for the general American readership. For adults and children alike (I started reading King at 12-years-old, don’t tell my mother), the novel would’ve acted as the aforementioned mirror in which many working-class struggles were reflected. Jack Torrance became not just a mallet-wielding, eye-rolling monster overnight, but through living the very struggles that King’s readers were too-well acquainted with in late-70s America.

As with Patrick Bateman, readers could identify with Jack. And it wasn’t just a case of setting the book back on the shelf and abandoning it. No. For how could you, when the pages told of your own potential fate?

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We are human. For antagonists to work, they also must be human. Figuratively, of course. Physically, they can take on all shapes and forms. See Count Dracula (Dracula), or the White Walkers (Game of Thrones). Not quite us, but they carry motivations akin to what we see in our own world. In these cases: sovereignty, domination, genocide — now hold the mirror up.

Antagonists tend to embody the fears of a given time, the time in which they find themselves created. For the bad guy to steal the show (or the page), either he, she or it must find it’s way past the readers fingers. Past their eyes, even, and into a darker space that brews feelings of familiarity.

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More antagonists and the familiar fears they represent:

Dracula: Love, lust. The fear of exile. The fear of loneliness. The fear of death.

Anton Chigurh: Loss of feeling and emotion in an overstimulated world. Helplessness to fate.

Walter White: Mediocrity and financial stress and, of course, illness.

Annie Wilkes: Fear of isolation. Using fictional worlds as a means to escape reality.

Lady MacBeth: Fear of going ‘against the grain’. Opposing a patriarchal society.

Carrie White: Not being accepted. Alienation.

The Shark (Jaws): The fear of the unknown. Of not knowing when or how something might happen.

T-100 (Terminator): The fear of fate. Of knowing, no matter what you do, it has already been written.

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