AP English Literature and Composition

A character is any figure a text asks the reader to treat as a person, and the first job in analyzing one is to decide what kind of figure it is. The label is not the point of the analysis, but it tells you what the text is likely to do with the character and what the character is there to make visible. Characters are the means by which a text shows readers values, beliefs, assumptions, biases and cultural norms, so a sorting of characters is really a sorting of what each one carries. ## Protagonist and antagonist The **protagonist** is the main character, the figure whose situation drives the narrative and whose fortunes rise or fall. The **antagonist** is whatever opposes the protagonist, and that need not be a person. It can be another character, the protagonist's own internal conflicts, a collective such as a town, a family or a whole society, or nature itself. This matters because it changes how you describe a conflict. In a story about a fisherman caught by a storm, the antagonist is the sea; in a story about a clerk who cannot bring himself to resign from a job he hates, the antagonist may be the clerk's own fear. Naming the antagonist accurately stops an interpretation from collapsing into "good against bad" when the opposition is something stranger. Protagonists and antagonists often stand for contrasting values. A protagonist who values loyalty and an antagonist who values advancement are not only two people in conflict; they are two answers to the question of…