Antagonist

Every hero must have his villain. In research papers on the role of the antagonist, the villain is revealed as serving an very important fuction in driving the plot. Paper Masters will write custom research on any antagonist you need to study in a theme or work of literature. Some very well-known antagonists in past literary works are:

• Sherlock Holmes had Moriarity
• Superman has Lex Luthor
• Hamlet had Claudius

The villain of the story is formally known as the antagonist, the character that stands in opposition to the protagonist. However, it must be noted that not all villains are antagonists, and not all antagonists are villains.

Authors create antagonists to provide conflict, or an obstacle to the main character. Indeed, the antagonist of a story need not be a person. Occasionally, some inner struggle of the protagonist serves the function of providing some obstacle. In Hamlet, for example, Hamlet's uncle Claudius can be seen as the antagonist of the play. Or is he? Could it be that Hamlet's indecisiveness is the true antagonist of the play, restraining Hamlet from acting?

Similarly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sets up both the protagonist and the antagonist within the same person. Stevenson explored the idea of the doppelganger in order to explore the idea that both good and evil exist with the same person. The point of the antagonist is to create conflict. Therefore, the antagonist of the piece could be an impersonal force. A fictionalization of Robert Falcon Scott's doomed trek to the South Pole could see the impossible conditions of Antarctica as an antagonist, placing insurmountable obstacles in the path of the party that slowed their advance, delayed their return, and caused the party to starve and freeze to death.