posted
At a recent lecture/book signing, (Yes, I got to meet OSC! ) Card said that there was not an antagonist in Ender’s Game. He supported this statement by pointing out that each character, even if they had conflicts with each other, were trying to do what they believed good and/or necessary. He conceded that Bonzo could count as a temporary antagonist, but that even his actions were understandable…
This is all well and good, he wrote the book, and if he wants to say Ender was the antagonist he can… First of all, what do you think? Is there an antagonist?
Second, my little sister, a freshman in HS attended this lecture with me, and decided to do an English assignment on this book because the assignment seemed childish by requesting the students to identify the major parts, and she wanted to make it interesting by using this comment from Card. Her teacher told her “Bull Crap, all books have to have an antagonist.” Where upon my sister also conceded Bonzo’s part, and why Card said he didn’t really count. The teacher refused to believe her, leaving both of us very frustrated…
I would love to have OSC email this teacher himself and defend my litte sister!
Any suggestions?
Also, a thing to keep in mind, This teacher is the kind who has no interest in Sci-Fi or Fantasy… She prefers books with shotguns and wild game.. ugh.. Posts: 13 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I agree with your little sister's teacher. All books have an antagonist. Now whether or not you can *sympathize* with that antagonist is a whole different story.
I'd like to use my favorite anime as an example. Saiyuki is a story about four misfits who go on a journey to stop the resurrection of an Ox demon. While they encounter all sorts of enemies, the main antagonists are characters you actually like, and feel horrible for when tragedy strikes them. That doesn't make them any less antagonistic; they're foiling the main character's plans, much like Bonzo attempted to do with Ender. The only difference is that the creator of the series gave us the gift of seeing from their perspective.
Or maybe OSC doesn't like using the word "antagonist" because it's synonymous with "bad guy"? I can understand that.
quote: Card said that there was not an antagonist in Ender’s Game. He supported this statement by pointing out that each character, even if they had conflicts with each other, were trying to do what they believed good and/or necessary.
Antagonists don't have to be evil. They merely need to oppose the protagonist. Ender's Game has several antagonists.
(Consider the Operative in Serenity, a movie Card recently really enjoyed. The Operative is trying to do what he believes is good and/or necessary -- but is clearly an antagonist.)
Posts: 1777 | Registered: Jan 2003
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More background info... explanation on why I'm frustrated ...
I feel it is a little silly for this teacher to be arguing with a Double Nebula and Hugo award winning Author, especially when it is about his own book... So either she's calling Card a liar, or my sister... and it seems to be my sister she's targeting.
posted
Ok, Chirsty, I understand what youre saying, but CARD himself said that there wasn't any... I understand the point of arguing it... but this teacher is just calling SOMEONE a liar...
And if a writer chooses to write a book without an antagonist, is it not possible to achieve it? And actually have a story, obviously.
Posts: 13 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Anywhere on this site you can email a mod or fill out a comment form will eventually get to OSC, his wife, or Kathleen (his assistant).
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: And if a writer chooses to write a book without an antagonist, is it not possible to achieve it?
It is certainly possible to write a book without a sentient antagonist. A lot of disaster novels and travel documentaries fall into this category, although Ender's Game does not.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Graff is the antagonist. He actively opposes Ender. Most of the hurdles Ender faces in EG are because of Graff.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DavidGill: Graff is the antagonist. He actively opposes Ender. Most of the hurdles Ender faces in EG are because of Graff.
I'm not so sure about that. He clearly wasn't very nice to Ender, but most of what he did was for the sake of bringing out Ender's potential. I wouldn't really say that counts as helping him, but at teh same time I don't think that it is really oposition either.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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If you look at all the Ender novels, especially the later "Speaker" trilogy, it's really Graff who is the antagonist of the story. He's the one who MADE Battle School, who made Ender, and who used Ender to kill a race of aliens. Ender of course gets all the blame, but Graff was running the show. Just because Graff didn't know the Formics/Buggers weren't gonna come back and kill them all doesn't excuse his actions.
Posts: 50 | Registered: May 2005
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Mrs. Smith -- when you write to any of the choices at the help desk above -- it can be forwarded to OSC. Whether he will have time to answer, I can't promise, but it will get to him.
Posts: 780 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Antagonist means to move against. It doesn't mean not being nice or not caring for. If we're speaking in terms of lit theory here, then the antagonist is the person whose actions cause a change in the protagnoist's actions. Graff certainly did change Ender's actions.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DavidGill: Antagonist means to move against. It doesn't mean not being nice or not caring for.
I agree with you in this regard.
quote:Originally posted by DavidGill: If we're speaking in terms of lit theory here, then the antagonist is the person whose actions cause a change in the protagnoist's actions. Graff certainly did change Ender's actions.
Given this definition, I can agree that Graff is the antagonist. That said, I'm not so sure that I can accept that definition. Every definition that I've seen of the word also indicates opposition or obstruction. I'm not really sure that I view Graff's actions in that way.
I suppose it depends on what viewpoint we are taking. From Ender's view, he would certainly be considered an antagonist, and I believe that Ender did view him in this way. However, from the more detached view that we have as a reader, I'm not 100% sure that I would view him as an antagonist.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
No one individual is the antagonist in Ender's Game. The true antagonist is humanity's need to survive at all costs.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Thanks for all your comments, I will try the help desk KaCard, thanks. and Survivor, I agree with you my sister and I agreed that Human nature might be considered an antagonist if the teacher would count that... but she didnt like that answer either. :shrug:
posted
I would agree with the idea that Graff is an antagonist in Ender's Game, but I think that the Buggers are the main antagonist.
It is the Buggers who scoured Earth in an earlier invasion, and it is the Buggers who are the purpose for Battle School, for Graff's cruelties, even for the creation of the Hegemony. Until the end of the novel, everybody is focused on defeating the Buggers.
Now, we learn at the end of the novel that the Buggers weren't quite the bad guys that they were thought to be, and that the triumph over the antagonist is one of the greatest tragedies, but as one can't really factor in the end of the novel until one reaches it, the Buggers remain the antagonist.
Now if I was a literary postmodernist, I would argue that the real antagonist is the oppressive capitalist humans and their terrible habits of wiping out peaceful, law-abiding collectivist societies which show that inequality is enshrined by violence in the human soul, and thus Card deftly shows how we must revolt, overthrow the corrupt government of Amerika and bring about a communist utopia so that when we really do run into the Buggers, we will be full of peace and love, we will have eradicated war, and we will dance with the Buggers throughout the stars throwing flowers and smoking pot. But I'm not a postmodernist, I only mock them.
Posts: 561 | Registered: Feb 2005
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"The protagonist is often faced with a "foil"; that is, a character known as the antagonist who most represents or creates obstacles that the protagonist must overcome."
That's Graff, neh?
"That said, I'm not so sure that I can accept that definition."
It's a standard use of the term. The antagonist creates obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. In overcoming the obstacles, the protagonist changes. In complex novels it is more difficult to clearly define roles.
The buggers are the enemy, not the antagonists. Their actions do not change Ender's character.
posted
Ah, but they are the ones sending him all those weird dreams when he's in Command School. And he's fighting all those battles against them to the point that he starts breaking down. So they do affect his character.
A "foil" isn't really an antagonist, the foil only serves as an object on which the character demonstrates existing attributes. Not just the protagonist either, though usually that is the character that you would develop by using a foil. An antagonist can also be a foil (and often is), but they are not identical terms.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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But if Gaff could be thought of as an antagonist, is he more so than Bonzo? But Bonzo is so small a part he really seems just more of a bad guy than an antagonist... he was only able to harm and threaten Ender because Gaff (and the other teachers) allowed it, so by not "protecting" ender Gaff remains the closest antagonist... But again... Gaff was trying to do what was best for Ender... and since the book was written in 3rd person, we as the reader are aware of his true intentions, so he doesnt really seem the antagonist.
How about the later books... Speaker, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind... the bad piggies in one part, I suppose... Definently the Government of the 100 Worlds, but again, as OSC pointed out at the lecture... All these charicters were trying to do good things, and since the 3rd person point of view allows us to see this, are they antagonists?
Posts: 13 | Registered: Oct 2005
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If Ender just wanted to be left alone(which seemed to be his goal throughout the book besides knowing that the buggers needed to be beaten) then Graff was the antagonist because if there's one thing Graff didn't let ender be, it was alone.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Sorry mariann, but you are wrong. I could write 10 million books without anatagonists. I'd name them 'My Little Pony' 1-10 mil. Or other variations
I'd have to agree with celebrindal however, even though I didn't see that post until while I was about to type about this schpiel about graff and his cronies being the only possible 'true' antagonist.
Now, if the book was more like the short story, Mazer's part could have been seen as an antagonist. The part about thier brawl's definantly would have fit the bill, even though he was supposedly 'teaching' him Posts: 42 | Registered: Aug 2005
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1. An antagonist does not have to be evil, he/it simply has to act against the interests of the protagonist.
2. I suppose you could argue that you could write a story without an antagonist, but if that were the case, then the story should have no conflict (and thus rather bornig). Ender's Game certainly does.
3. An antagonist and protagonist can be the same person. Take the following scenario: (And I've stolen this example from here as I couldn't think of a decent one of my own.) Character A wants to ask Character B out. Character B wants to be asked out by Character A. However, Character A doesn't know that Character B wants that, and his fear of rejection stops him from asking. He has just acted as his own antagonist.
4. I believe that throughout the majority of Ender's Game, the only constant antagonist that we see is Ender's fear of becoming Peter. Peter isn't actually doing anything to confront Ender through the majority of the story, however Ender's fear of Peter, or being what Peter is/was controls all of his actions to a point.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
An antagonist does not have to be existant in a book - people will always find and create temporary antagonists be it the teachers, bonzo, or the buggers - people will mentally create these because they feel they need to shift blame. However most books follow patterns which Im sure are all taught.
Man VS Nature Man VS Man Man VS Self Man VS Abstract
There are a few more catagories that can be considered but generally these are the conflicts that are common. If a story HAD to have a antagonist then what of nature stories? Is the weather considered an antagonist? I agree with the idea that one can be both the protagonist and the antagonist in the case of internal struggle. However is this the case in Enders Game? Not once is his internal struggle one that creates self destruction - Now in Enders Shadow Bean is a temporary antagonist for himself because of his self-destructive thought process but that changes.
I will say that there can be thought to be antagonists such as Graff ect. However the core struggle is more abstract - it is Ender against society. To quote "A person is free until Humanity needs them"
Now when thinking of antagonism within the story ask yourself - What is the significance of Enders landside leave?
Posts: 129 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I submit that it isn't just society, it is a fundamental drive of the human race, present across all societies, even those that consciously reject that drive. Which is why the home leave, isolated on a lake with little involvement of society, is such a powerful weapon against Ender. In the end it comes down to the plea of his sister that he save her, forget about something abstract like "the human race".
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Mrs. Smith, your sister's teacher is simply wrong - and arrogant about it as well. "Antagonist" has a specific meaning in literature, and the only way to say that every story has to have an antagonist is to redefine antagonist until it means nothing (or everything).
But when you run into a teacher like that, you just spout back to them what they want to hear, get a grade, and move on. You don't have to BELIEVE him (or her).
The belief that a story must have an antagonist is usually a recipe for a writer to turn the story over to the bad guy, by making the antagonist the motive force for the action of the story. Whereas people like me, who try to write stories about good people doing good, will focus on the protagonist in a series of struggles - with antagonists (sometimes) and other obstacles, including at times the choice between two good but mutually exclusive actions. To take a complex story like that and try to reduce it to the protagonist/antagonist model is childish and meaningless. This teacher has a procrustean bed and he's going to make EVERY story fit it or cut it down or stretch it until it does ...
Or else (the simplest course) declare it a 'bad' story and therefore it's ok that it doesn't fit his "perfect" model of literature.
Such nonsense. Stories are ordered presentations of causally related events, period. They have an antagonist when they do, and don't when they don't. It has nothing to do with whether it's good or correct or anything else. If you were writing the life of Napoleon as fiction, who would the antagonist be? When Napoleon started, Wellington was off in India. So doesn't Napoleon's story start till Wellington enters the picture? Or could you begin in Napoleon's childhood? Or his first rise to prominence as a young artillery officer? What kind of idiot would require that you can't begin his story till you have "the" antagonist present? Silliness.
Chances are, however, that the teacher was really asserting his contempt for and superiority to a sci-fi writer - because that was the attitude he was taught to have in college by teachers who found it easier to dismiss sci-fi than deal with it, since it doesn't fit well within ANY of their literary paradigms, which were invented to explain why Modernism was the best literature ever. It wasn't, and even if it was, we've had a couple of literary revolutions since then - but most college English professors largely failed to notice it. they have their "true gospel" and refuse to see anything else ... and that's what they teach the kids who go out and become high school teachers.
Your sister has learned something very valuable - but it has nothing to do with whether a story has to have an antagonist. It has a lot to do with the fact that somebody can have a college degree and still remain profoundly, deliberately ignorant and unteachable.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Graff as antagonist: I don't think so. Graff is in fact the protagonist of his own story, and ultimately he and Ender share goals. Ender even accepts the burden of Graff's training, most of the time, even when he's angry or hurt or exhausted or puzzled by it. Ender could have done what Dink did, and refused to play.
But they are no more antagonists in the classic sense of the term than are the two stars in a buddy movie. Is Eddie Murphy the "antagonist" of Nick Nolte in "48Hours"? They oppose each other at first, sustain each other at the end; but the bad guy they fight at the end isn't the antagonist either (again in the classical sense), he's more the "maguffin" - the goal they both struggle for but which does not actually provide the important element of the story, which is the development of love and trust between unlike persons.
Isn't that what happens with Graff and Ender? Ender and Maser? Opposition leading to cooperation and trust? It's all very complicated.
Let's face it. Greek theatre is long behind us. We tell FAR more complicated stories now (and so did the Greeks, as Euripides proved). Models based on theories that even the Greeks ignored should hardly be causing teachers to treat students today dismissively for declaring the obvious: That those models don't fit much of anything.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Hah, ironic, I was going to make a post last night about how I hated the CANON of literature that is tuaght in high school english classes. One the stories are very bland and predictable, and two they all fit perfectly in the models we are supposed to use to "analyze" them with. Trying to analyze all worthy literature with the tools given in high school english classes is like trying to write every essay, paper, document in your life with the 5 paragraph essay format that is shoved down 7th graders throats in North Carolina. So many people I knew had thier writing ability stunted for a long time following 7th grade because we had only been taught how to layout and write papers in the 5 paragraph format used in the state writing tests, not in any general forms.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
When I read Ender's Game, the main antagonist was Graff and the governing adults. There were a series of opponents that Ender faced in direct conflict (from Stilson to Bonzo to the Buggers) but each of these were in a sense pawns of the larger game being played by Graff - a game that Ender wanted to escape. That's the main conflict Ender faces, between himself and Graff, and it rises steady as Ender is being challenged more and more in battle school, until ultimately he breaks down. Then, at the lake, part of Ender decides to go along with Graff's game, even as some part of him wants to end it and stay on Earth. This does not make Graff and the adults any less antagonists, but rather it transforms the conflict between them and Ender into something internal, going on within Ender as much as between Ender and Graff (and later Maser). That's still the main conflict though because, while the bugger war is going on for everyone else, we are still seeing through Ender's eyes. Ender sees himself in conflict with the adults, not the buggers, up until the very end when he realizes (in tragic fashion) that he wasn't fighting the game he thought he was.
In this fashion, I also think the main theme of Ender's Game is education - because this is the same sort of protagonist-antagonist relationship that I think kids (somewhat falsely) assume they are in with adults. They are assigned chores or homework or whatnot, and see these as a sort of game with adults, only to discover in the end that they were very much on the same side as the adults all along, even if those adults were manipulating the whole time. Rather than a bugger war, though, they face life.
I certainly did not read this element of the story as a maguffin. This, as I read it, was the most important element of the story - the conflict between Ender and the adult system manipulating him. The bugger war, the battle school games, the bullies... these were all the maguffins and/or other side elements, contributing to the larger struggle. Of course, I've never known a great book that couldn't be read more than one way. It's entirely possible, maybe probable, that my view of the antagonist says more about me than it does about the book.
quote:Graff as antagonist: I don't think so. Graff is in fact the protagonist of his own story, and ultimately he and Ender share goals. Ender even accepts the burden of Graff's training, most of the time, even when he's angry or hurt or exhausted or puzzled by it. Ender could have done what Dink did, and refused to play.
I don't think sharing goals makes Graff less of an antagonist, though. I think that just makes Graff a more compelling antagonist - because it creates an external conflict that corresponds to an internal conflict in Ender. I think most of the best antagonists share many of the same goals as the protagonists they correspond to. I also think a great antagonist can also be a good guy, who is doing the right thing, perhaps even moreso than the protagonist.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
This is a perfectly valid reason - of a large portion of Ender's Game. But it necessariliy leaves out the whole struggle to understand leadership, and Ender's community-building - which is actually helped by Graff's actions. Graff is in the leader-making business, and you can make a credible case that Graff is the protagonist of Ender's Game <grin>.
I'm not trying to be deliberately difficult, and I'm not calling you wrong - I'm just saying that simplistic models don't work. It's like the "3-act structure" that everybody teaches in screenwriting classes. It's a crock - it doesn't help you understand anything. Every lousy movie script getting passed around in Hollywood has the 3-act structure, and they still suck. What good is the protagonist/antagonist model if it forces you to ignore important aspects of the story? And even if it were RIGHT, what have you actually learned about the story - about how it functions in the transaction between writer and reader, or how it forms shared-memory communities, or why fiction is valued by every culture, etc.?
In other words, when you have a descriptive tool, what do you actually get from it? Especially when it only describes part of the elephant? <grin>
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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I think that who we identify as the antagonist in a story tells us a lot about why we identify with the protagonist (assuming we do that, of course). By picking Bonzo or the crowd of envious kids that try to bully Ender, we say that we identify with Ender's social isolation. By picking Graff, we identify with Ender's feeling of resentment towards the oppressive authorities that control his life. By identifying the Buggers as the antagonist, we identify with Ender's struggle to save his world and race from destruction. And by identifying humanity's need to survive as the antagonist, we identify with Ender's empathy for the non-human (one of the few themes of his character that is present from the begining to the end of the book).
Of course, any of these flip answers are gross oversimplifications of what we learn about ourselves from our identification of any particular character or entity in the story as the antagonist. A person might identify Bonzo as the antagonist because he is willing to elevate his own worthless pride above the survival of his entire species. Or the Buggers as the antagonist because of their perfect communism. Or Graff as the antagonist because he's old and fat. There can be thoughtless as well as insightful reasons for picking anyone as the primary antagonist.
I tend to believe that any work unified by a main driving dramatic tension (which Ender's Game clearly is, one way or another) does have a primary antagonist which produces that tension. But perhaps I'm defining the term too broadly, since I include non-sentient, highly abstract entities like "humanity's will to survive at any cost" as potential adversaries for the hero to fight.
There is also the fact that the story works with any and all of the various "antagonists" mentioned. It has multiple sources of tension, while I may regard some as being less important than others, others may regard mine as being all but insane (or rather, outright insane). Which is why I have to agree with Card's decision to decline to identify any given tension as the one "right" answer.
That kind of thinking reduces the complexity and richness of a work down to nothing more than its Cliff notes. Besides, letting everyone pick out their own answer provides us with so much information about how those various readers approach the story, how could I consent to anything that would deny us those answers?
One thing I want to know, though.
Why hasn't anyone picked Peter as the antagonist? Somebody even suggested Ender's fear of (not Peter himself, no) becoming Peter. But Peter is such a rich character, and has such a major impact on Ender, it seems like a fruitful field to explore.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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When I first read Ender's Game (the first 5 or so times, actually) I was too young to worry about protagonist/antagonist kinds stuff. For me it was just Ender, and everything else was either with him or against him.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I've never been able to warm-up to Peter. He still, even to the last Shadow book, appears to be motivated, in large part, by self interest. Despite the idea that he saves the world, it seems to only be a by-product of wanting to compete with Ender for his parent's and the world's attention.
The only selfless act I recall from Peter, is when he was playing with Bean's children and I don't know if that is enough to let me sympathize with him or give him a pass for all the harm he did in order to secure his position of power.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I always thought of the term "antagonist" with a definition similar to this one, by which it seems that Ender's Game has several. I'm trying to understand how this definition makes the term mean "nothing (or everything)", and what would, by OSC's definition, be a true antagonist. It seems to me that in a well written story, everyone and everything has a motive that can be understood from some perspective. In many theologies, even Satan became who he is out of a desire to save all of humanity without suffering. If even the devil can't be considered an antagonist in that story, what good is the word?
Just as a disclaimer, I don't mean this as a slam to OSC's post. I have a speech/writing impediment that makes me sometimes sound sarcastic or snarky when I don't intend to. So let me just say that I'm asking as someone who takes it for granted that when it comes to writing, obviously I'm wrong and OSC is right, and I just want to know why.
posted
As a corollary, I'm wondering what the exact difference is (if any) between a villain and an antagonist. I can easily see how Ender's Game can be considered a story without a villain, but I'm having a harder time wrapping my mind around the idea that it doesn't have an antagonist.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: If you were writing the life of Napoleon as fiction, who would the antagonist be? When Napoleon started, Wellington was off in India. So doesn't Napoleon's story start till Wellington enters the picture? Or could you begin in Napoleon's childhood? Or his first rise to prominence as a young artillery officer? What kind of idiot would require that you can't begin his story till you have "the" antagonist present? Silliness.
One other corollary question. If it is conceded that Wellington would be considered an antagonist in a story of Napoleon, does that mean that his motives are less understandable and/or more purely evil from his point of view than Bonzo's or Graff's?
posted
If I wanted, I could point out that Ender's Game roughly follows the 3-act structure (Act I pre-battle school, Act II, battle school, Act III on the asteroid), but I won't. <wink, wink>
I could also point out that New Criticism, which helped create the labels of protag and antag, ingores the author's intent, but I won't. <nudge, nudge>
I will point out, though, that Lucifer is often considered the protagonist of "Paradise Lost." Protagonist/antagonist is not necessarily equated with good/evil.
The upstart is that this protag/antag talk is literary criticism, a common language for people who write about writing. It's not a writing technique. None of this will make you write a better story.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I think that my point is that each reader has to find the meaning of a work of literature individually. That includes identifying the protagonist, the antagonist, and things like that. And those answers will differ from one person to the next.
My other point is that nobody likes Peter, and yet he still doesn't get picked as the antagonist. Okay, so that isn't really a point, it's more of an observation, something I didn't expect.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Protagonist/antagonist is not necessarily equated with good/evil.
That's my point. I never thought they were related. But from what I understand of OSC's posts (and, granted, I may be missing the point altogether) Graff and Bonzo aren't antagonists solely because they are, from some point of view, not pure evil.
If I'm missing something, I hope someone will clue me in.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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I was over 20 years old when I first learned the meaning of the word 'antagonist'. English is my second language, and in my native language (Finnish), there isn't a direct counterpart for the word 'antagonist'. There are some words that mean roughly the same, but they acknowledge the simplistic idea of everything being black/white. You could translate the first word that comes to my mind meaning 'the antagonist' in the story as 'the main evil'. The word reminds me of characters from cartoons, like Shredder from the Turtles.
So, when I read any 'serious' books, I am not labeling any one character as the antagonist. I can label someone as an 'asshole', or a 'god damn sadistic bastard', though. If the story resembles real life in complexity, the characters have different motives, ambitions, and view of the world. They have their reasons for hurting the 'protagonist' (which translates in my head as 'main character' without hinting that there has to be an opposite. Like one song from Kinston Wall says: "Everyone is the star in their movie").
I have read Ender's Game, the Speaker series, and the Shadow series. I think the closest thing to an antagonist in those books is Achilles. Maybe if I had read Shadow of the Hegemon and/or Shadow Puppets _without_ reading Ender's Shadow, he would seem even more so.
But having first read about his childhood along with Bean's, he became from the start a human being. So, in the later books when he's very much like a 'true' antagonist, with the power to interfere everywhere, he still doesn't feel like he's some Shredder in new clothes. Achilles is just Achilles, and I know so much about his past that I can sympathize with him. At times the image he's built around himself becomes thin enough to let something else leak through, like with Petra.
I see I had more to say than I thought. It happens so often I should know better already.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:You could translate the first word that comes to my mind meaning 'the antagonist' in the story as 'the main evil'.
It seems like, according to my understanding, you're confusing "antagonist" with "villain". A better three-word definition of antagonist, as I understand it, is "provider of conflict." I can see how there may not be anyone in the story who is pure evil, but there are plenty of people who provide Ender (our main character/protagonist) with constant, gripping and intense conflict that he must struggle to overcome. Whether their motives are pure, how similar their goals (immediate and long-term) are to Ender's, or whether the conflict has a positive effect on Ender's life or humanity in general are things that can be debated. But I think it's pretty clear that there's plenty of direct conflict going on throughout the book, these instances of conflict can be traced back to the actions of certain people, and without them, one of the most enthralling books I've ever read would have become interminably tedious.
Without going back to the book, the only scene I can remember off the top of my head in which Ender isn't struggling immediately against another person or creature (or, possibly, computer program) is the scene on the lake with Valentine. That's a good scene, but if the whole book were like that it would have lost the vast majority of its power (IMHO).
That, however, is only according to my understanding.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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I would agree that EG has no antagonist in this way it is more true to life. It is simply a collection of people interacting with eachother, each with there own personal goals. I mean if u are going to say Graff is the antagonist because he pushes Ender to become the best commander he can be and you say Bonzo is the antagonist because he hates Ender. THan couldn't you say Peter is the antagonist because he is Ender's biggest personal hurtle? Or Petra because she hates Ender for a short time for crushing her in the game? Or maybe his parents for not loving him the way they should just because he is a third. My point is that this book is very true to life in that it has no cut and dry antagonist and protagonist. Sure Ender is the protagonist but if he was the only protagonist then a book like ES would not be possible because there wouldn't be enough character there to make a story out of.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Well, there was that wasp, the one that Val doesn't mind leaving alone.
No, more seriously, there is an intense conflict between what's best for Ender and what the human race needs from him pervading that scene. Ender and Val are both aware of it, Val's loyalty to Ender vying with her loyalty to her species provides all the action in that scene.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Remember that the discussion was not whether Ender had any enemies, but whether Ender's Game the novel has "an antagonist", using the literary model that has ONE protagonist and ONE antagonist per story. That model fits almost nothing that I write (just a few exceptions) and not much of the rest of world fiction, frankly. It's a poor model, and it's hard to believe anyone is still teaching it.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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"My other point is that nobody likes Peter, and yet he still doesn't get picked as the antagonist."
Sometimes no one likes the protagonist. Think HARRY POTTER 5 (with minor character developement SPOILERS). Stupid Harry acts like such whiny little &#$(% through most of the book. He seriously got on my nerves. But is anyone going to question Harry as the protagonist? He's in the freaking title .
Also, I really like Doc Ock. Just thought I'd say. He's a likable character, both in the sense that he's a "cool villain" and in the sense that the viewers (or at least my) sympathies were with him. I wasn't on his side, but I wanted him to be okay. And I think it's pretty clear that he is the antagonist of Spiderman 2-- he even drives all the plot except for Peter Parker's struggle with his inner demons.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
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And yes, Peter's influence on Ender didn't end when Ender went to Battle School, but Peter's actions, once Ender was gone, no longer had a significant effect on any part of Ender's life, except to keep him from returning to Earth, which was in Ender's best interest.
Ender's issues related to Peter have more to do with Ender's reaction to his own actions and self-analysis than feeling that Peter is his "enemy."
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) Card said that there was not an antagonist in Ender’s Game. He supported this statement by pointing out that each character, even if they had conflicts with each other, were trying to do what they believed good and/or necessary. He conceded that Bonzo could count as a temporary antagonist, but that even his actions were understandable… ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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“Bull Crap, all books have to have an antagonist.” Where upon my sister also conceded Bonzo’s part, and why Card said he didn’t really count. The teacher refused to believe her, leaving both of us very frustrated… ![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
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