The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Who sees her as the bad guy? They’re two of the first terms you learn in the study of literature: protagonist and antagonist.  The protagonist is the hero, the schnook at the center of the story, the innocent in the middle of a hurricane.  It’s easy to sympathize with heroes.  Everything seems to happen to them and they’re created to be someone you like.  So it should be easy to guess who the antagonist is.  That’s the “udder guy”, the heavy, the louse who antagonizes the hero. Actually, an antagonist is simply whatever force that opposes the hero but some opponents go out of their way to make the good guy’s life miserable.  At any rate, it’s easy to see the tale from the hero’s point of view but when I was struggling with a story years ago I got some good advice from my husband.   “Never forget” he said, looking over the rims of his glasses, “No one sees themselves as the villain.” Bertha Mason before she went to England..Doesn’t look crazy, does she? “No one sees themselves as the villain.”  That observation holds incredible insight and it’s the mechanism that unlocked a horde of parallel novels based…