Forum / Protagonistus Agonistes, or ... when is your main character utterly irredeemable?

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 19, 04:57pm

Last night, I tried to watch a movie, well reviewed, nominated by the Academy, with fine actors, but the protagonist, played by Hal Holbrook, a magnificent actor, was so utterly unlikeable that I had to stop watching. I do know, from reviews, that the protagonist, named Abner Meecham in the movie, intervenes to help a young girl who is being abused by her father, but his actions during the first few scenes simply mark the man as irritable, mean-spirited and troublesome. I did not like him at all.

Perhaps it's only me and I may try to watch it again, but it set me to thinking, when is a character so utterly obnoxious that he or she becomes a spoiler for the leading role in a novel or short story, or even a script?

It's common in the post-modernist era and beyond to present protagonists as flawed human beings, incapable of the sort of action demanded of the role of hero, heroine, but the evolution of the story provides these people with opportunities for elemental change. Of course, I'm not speaking of anything emotional or elegaic, a love story or a situational epic where the protagonist is a victim of circumstance, but if that story requires unnatural effort on his or her part as a catalyst through action, isn't it wise to show both the possibility or the immediate steps of character's emotional and/or empathic evolution?

Does that make sense?

I suppose the question is as the title above implies ... Can a character with no likeable qualities whatsoever, properly serve as a protagonist without revelation of the possibility for change until the latter part of a story? Can he or she succeed?

Or is that too broad a question?

Carol Reid
Jan 19, 07:04pm

I think the deeply unlikeable character can succeed. Perhaps the reader has to journey from intensely disliking the character and looking forward to his or her comeuppance to sensing some glimmer or possibility of redemption to...? Something else.

It's hard to spend time with on-screen characters who are very, very annoying in a shallow way. (thinking about the Julia Roberts character in that Eat, Pray, blah blah blah movie I saw a while ago)

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 12:30am

"Eat, pray, blah blah blah..." Yes, I quite missed that one myself.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jan 20, 01:16am

Eat, pray, blah blah blah -- the book was as annoying (if only I could 'find myself' by traveling FOR A YEAR to exotic locales and blah blah blah). Hmmph. Sit down in lotus position, breathe in and out for a few minutes, and you'll find yourself eventually, for free.

Okay. Rant over.

James, I know exactly what you're talking about. I have a friend who wrote an amazing, quirky, violent tale about a young woman who'd become so jaded, so cynical that she'd given up on life and herself. She ends up transforming into a better woman. But her agent couldn't sell it. EVERYONE (well, the editors who looked at it) thought the protag was too dispicable. So I think if you want 'commercial' success, yeah, your protag must be sympathetic in some way (and pretty early in the story).

Personally, I am fascinated by assholes in literature and the movies -- they're fun to try to diagnose. Better a villian than a milktoast. Peace...

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 02:06am

Thank you, Linda. I hear you about the commercial success. I'd say that commercial success is not important to me, but doubt that it would ever be a possibility anyway.

Assholes can be fascinating, but they are generally played off as antagonists against the protagonists we can relate to, or at least understand and appreciate. It seems to be necessary at some level. I'm curious, though, as to why that is true, or if it even is true.

I have a story in mind, one that I will probably limit to a short story, but the main character is not only disagreeable, but violent as well. I would like to write his story from his perspective, hence the reason for the question.

It could be interesting, a study in skewed perspectives, but who will read it?

Carol Reid
Jan 20, 02:22am

Probably me. This brings to mind the film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I found the novel flat and unreadable, but the film version, despite its violence and bleak conclusion, held my attention, almost despite myself. I think this was accomplished by showing an incident of terrible violence happening to the female protag early on.

Susan Tepper
Jan 20, 02:31am

Hannibal Lecter. It doesn't get any worse, yet a profoundly successful film character.
Ever notice that the more unruly the political games become, the more the publishers "demand" sympathetic characters from writers!
Absurd!
Write what you want. You can't write to "the market" because nobody can figure out the market anymore. Not the agents, not the editors, not the publishers, not the public.
The World Will End on June 17

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jan 20, 03:02am

Well, yes, I'd read a story about a disagreeable and violent man. I am interested in what makes such people tick, what makes them disagreeable and violent. I like to read about people and worlds far different and vaster than myself/my own.

A reason for the quotes around commercial. I doubt I will find (or even seek) that type of success myself. But if you want it, than some recognition of what the market will bear is necessary to breakthrough and perhaps, sustain, success. All I know is that I read less and less of what the Big 7 (6? 5? 4?) publish, and more and more of what small and indy presses put out. The latter tends to print fat juicy stuff with complex (and yes, disagreeable) characters with harrowing storylines that matter. Stuff that makes me give a damn.

Okay, Susan, now I'm terrified -- why does the world end? Peace...

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 04:53am

The world's been ending for as long as I can remember.

Hannibal Lecter had his Clarice Starling. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had her Mikael Blomkvist, so both of these had someone grounded in the 'normal' world, a person through which the reader/viewer could find a sympathetic perspective into the dark mind of the central character.

Thanks, I do believe that gives me what I need. My violent protagonist needs a similar medium through which to communicate.

My goodness, you've solved my dilemma. Carol, Susan, Linda, thanks ever so much ...

Susan, why June 17?

On the other hand, why not?

Susan Tepper
Jan 20, 12:23pm

On the other hand, why not?

Marcus Speh
Jan 20, 01:03pm

i'm partial on this june 17 business.

as for your original question: I recently introduced an unlikeable character in my novella, a camp commandant. not just an asshole, a perverse guy, genet-perverse. wholly unlikeable in every way and my wife/editor objected greatly. it took all the fun out for her. and she can take a beating (in terms of literature, of course). in hindsight i thought she was right. i was in a bad mood that day, weird and strange, and wrote weird and strange things. i'm better now, thank you.

stephen hastings-king
Jan 20, 01:22pm

this question makes me think of franz biberkopf from doblin's berlin alexanderplatz who was as i recall utterly unsympathetic--violent, stupid, ugly in a violent, stupid ugly situation that was because of the machinery of the piece entirely engrossing less because you were let in on some secret than because you watched him start off in a shitty place and get dismantled. or kein the sinologist (and everyone else) in canetti's auto-da-fe...again less because you found out what made these people tick than because the sentences draw you into the disintegration that is kein's inner world---and here, too, the endpoint is the utter destruction of the main character. if memory serves, these are two lovely examples of what i guess we could call the everything sucks school of writing.

i think characters are the implications of proper names. maybe if i get to a point of wanting to play with proper names (at the momet i find that they add too much weight and that arbitrarily) i'll think about making vile people. i think it'd be fun to make someone utterly vile. right now were i to do it, the character would likely resemble the one andy griffith played in face in the crowd. and that's a better vile character than i'd make.

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 01:48pm

Stephen, good examples. Face in the Crowd, "Lonesome" Rhodes as played by Andy Griffith. Now THAT was a vile sonamuhgun. Again, here is a situation where the main character, the "bad" protagonist is played against the "good" protagonist, the character Marcia Jeffries, played by Patricia Neal in the film.

Hud is another example of such a device, from the novel, Horseman Pass By, penned by Larry McMurtry. Hud is an ass and a bastard, played off against/with his younger brother, Lonnie.

I'm seeing a pattern.

Marcus, lately, I've been waking up with similar writing tendencies. Thinking of turning it into something unusually violent and utterly dark. Playing with it, anyway.

David Ackley
Jan 20, 02:25pm

Well, absent anywhere else, once can always turn Shakespearwards for case studies of the irredemable central character: Richard the Third, Coriolanus, MacBeth( good man gone terribly wrong). In contemporay lit if you can call it that, Brett Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" is a case of the truly repugnant character in unrelenting focus. What was annoying was the way the book, which is to say the author, seemed to roll in the muck with the character, plaisir de la boue as the French say. It's hard to know though how, despite his despicable nature, Shakespeare seems to implicate one in Richard's evil: I remember rooting for him when I first read the play. Kafka's central characters are often not very likeable, so passive and anxious, and if they elicit pity it seems tinged with contempt. How about Meursault, the eponymous "Stranger" of Camus..."My mother died yesterday, or maybe the day before..." Nice guy.

I suspect anyone can be an object of interest, however vile their nature: whether the reader identifies with them may be another matter.

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 06:36pm

David, you may be right and I will say that if the villain is intelligent and entertaining, colorful, he or she can get away with unbridled, accelerating evil. However, the villain in The Lovely Bones would never make it as a protagonist, I think, because his crime is not only heinous but grossly vile to anyone who has a child ... and his character? Entirely without appeal to anyone, utterly unlovely.

I suppose characters who are evil can be divided into two categories, those with appeal and those without. When I say 'appeal,' I am talking, of course, about perceptions. Some crimes and behavior can be linked to something appealing, a virtue perhaps. Armed robbery? Physical courage. Extortion? A sense of justice if the victim is a hypocrite. Other crimes and criminals ... say Jeffrey Dahmer ... lack appeal to almost everyone in the general population, whereas John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp, another story entirely. My wife would be the first to say something like, "I love the bad boys."

No doubt if MacBeth was less ambitious or had a wife who could care less about position, or if Richard was handsome instead of disfigured, they'd be less interesting.

I wonder if Camus's Stranger was just written, it would even be picked up by a publisher in America today?

Bill Yarrow
Jan 20, 06:37pm

It's the art! The art!

No one is more stupid or more shallow than Emma Bovary.

Bouvard and Pecuchet are not exactly heroes.

It's never who. It's always how.

Ann Bogle
Jan 20, 06:57pm

James, your observation is causing me to ask in a writerly way: do I write admirable characters? Answer: hmmm. If by admirable I mean ethical, there is a sort of ethics at play in the stories/prose poems/essays. I tend to disfavor the word "essay" to describe a form in which persons or figures are in motion, even when the persons/figures are based on memory. I favor the word "story" if it is one. To say "story" (as opposed to "short story") includes fiction/non-. I favor strokes of characterization to describe the figures/persons economically, to compress time -- though I'd love to be able to write the long sense of time, time as a character/entity in itself. Yes, to write time as an entity -- to convey something of the divine and elemental. Time as an entity like the Holy Ghost. I think it can be done in a miniaturist way inside stories.

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 06:58pm

Yes, Bill, the art, but even art bends to the forces of those who define, consume and validate art. Artists can break all the damn perceived 'rules,' but unless he or she takes the viewer/reader along for the ride, unless the artist attracts a following, the artist walks alone. Or drives alone. And will any of us be willing to get in the car with them unless we really want to? What makes us want to?

I don't like rules, not looking for the rule of appeal, but for the mechanics of the appeal. To understand and practice it. Personally, I think a writer without readers, while not unlike the sound of one hand clapping and, subsequently vaguely brave in a romantic sense, is somewhat a waste of the art.

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 20, 07:07pm

Ann, I totally agree on the 'strokes of characterization' as an effect, though I question the value of my role as an ethical influence beyond the asking of questions by default, beyond laying out the dilemma for nagging sensations of the conscience, dropped like cluster bombs in the best stories, bombs that produce thought when tripped, bombs that attach to the trousers and follow the reader sometimes for days before tripping, but always bringing substance to thought.

(Where did that come from?)

Susan Tepper
Jan 20, 07:15pm

What about Wutsek? (spell?). It's been done at the Met Opera in NY, all over the world, saw it as a play at Yale Rep.
It is perverse in the most perverse sense.
It is also brilliant.
An artist cannot be dictated to by public tastes or by anyone. You have to write what needs to come out.
Because... the time is flying by...
The World Will End on June 17

David Ackley
Jan 20, 07:35pm

Maybe the drama as a form is more receptive to--let's lay it out there-- evil characters. Frank O'Connor suggests that with the novel, the reader has to be able to identify with the main character from some better aspect of her/his ( the reader's ) self. Exterioralized for contemplation, even appreciation of the over the top quality of their malignance, but distanced, the character in drama has a function, an appeal. But nobody but a psychopath is likely to identify with them. In the novel, as you say rightly with "The Lovely Bones" we may be forced closer to such characters than we want to be. It's one thing to view the mud, another to be up to your ears in it.

stephen hastings-king
Jan 20, 07:53pm

wozzeck? the alban berg opera? must be. such cool stuff.

W.F. Lantry
Jan 20, 07:59pm

I'd like to support Bill's position. Two examples: disgusting foreign pervert seduces very young girl (when she turns 13, he calls her his aging beauty), and murders his rival for her affection.

Or, thanks to Susan's mention of opera, consider Mozart's Queen of the Night. Not exactly an admirable character.

In both cases, it's a question of emphasis and of art. Still, much as I admire those two, and speaking only for myself, I'm too superstitious to write a wholly malevolent character. After all, I'd have to live in that character's head for a while. Ick.

And if, by writing something, we bring it into being, and give it life in the world, through a kind of mystical incantation, there are other things I'd like to invent. ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Susan Tepper
Jan 20, 11:56pm

I have to say I enjoy living in the malevolent head sometimes. It's kind of a trip figuring out what the malevolent head will get up to next.

Susan Tepper
Jan 21, 12:07am

Stephen, yes! You have the right spelling. He is diabolical...

Wozzeck -- here is link to Metropolitan Opera libretto synopsis for the opera Wozzeck.
It is kind of pronounced Vutsek.

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/synopsis.aspx?id=407

Bill Yarrow
Jan 21, 03:05am

"but even art bends to the forces of those who define, consume and validate art"

Respectfully disagree, James.

Every bending ends in breaking.

What is art? Art is what endures.

Bill Yarrow
Jan 21, 03:09am

Woyzeck--opera based on wonderful play by Georg Buchner. Buchner didn't write much but all of it is amazing.

Bill Yarrow
Jan 21, 03:19am

"Last night, I tried to watch a movie, well reviewed, nominated by the Academy, with fine actors, but the protagonist, played by Hal Holbrook, a magnificent actor, was so utterly unlikeable that I had to stop watching."

Not meaning to contradict you, James, but I'd suggest that it ("That Evening Sun") was unwatchable because it was (however well reviewed) a bad movie, that is, a badly made movie, that is a badly written, directed, and edited movie. Of course, I say that with the unimpeachable authority of never having seen it. But that's what I suspect.

Sam Rasnake
Jan 21, 03:52am

I do think art endures - but it does so because it needs no reader, no viewer, and no listener. It outlasts. In spite of... If it needed the reader, the viewer, the listener, it would - in time - both bend and break.

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 21, 04:14am

"Of course, I say that with the unimpeachable authority of never having seen it."

Ha!

I love this place.

I love opinions.

On that day when all our opinions are in line ... one with the other ... neatly laid out like corn rows in Iowa, sown by the unknown hand that saves us all from strife. We'll all be in big trouble.

Either way, I got what I came for, a plan for my next project.

Now that I know the world's coming to an end, I'd best get busy and finish the one I'm working on now.

Susan Tepper
Jan 21, 04:24am

You got that right, Bro!
June 17
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