What Is an Antagonist? | Definition & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Aug 5
- 7 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
An antagonist is almost entirely defined by the protagonist. In fact, we can go so far as to say that the one cannot exist without the other. An antagonist usually represents an opposing force to the protagonist, which leads to the major conflict or tension that drives the action in the movie, novel, or drama. Many people think that the antagonist is the “bad guy” of the story or the play.
However, that is not necessarily the case. They are simply the one who opposes or thwarts the protagonist. For example, in the case of Macbeth, the antagonist is Macduff, and we could think of him as the “good guy” in the play. He is the one who brings justice to Macbeth for the evil deeds that Macbeth commits throughout the play. However, things aren't always that clear-cut, and there are even instances where the opposing force for the protagonist is themselves.
In my opinion, a good example of this is the reluctant prince Hamlet in the play named after him — Hamlet. His hesitancy, overthinking, and self-doubt are more of an antagonist than his uncle King Claudius, the obvious "bad guy" in the play. In this article, we take a closer look at examples of antagonists and how they work, including Macduff from the play Macbeth.
What does antagonist mean?
The word antagonist is from the Greek antagonistēs, which means opponent or rival. In terms of modern literature, it can be defined as follows:
An antagonist is a character that opposes and thwarts the protagonist, while creating conflict and driving the plot.
The antagonist is often needed, not just to create conflict and tension, but to define the protagonist. They act as a character foil to highlight the main attributes of the hero. A good example of this in modern cinema is Batman and Joker. The archetype of the Batman is that of the grim enforcer of law and order.
The Joker, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that. He is the archetype of the trickster or creator of chaos and anarchy. What would Batman even be if the Joker didn’t exist? He would have no purpose or meaning in his role as the grim enforcer or the night crusader.
In that regard, the antagonist can be seen as a vital force that defines and gives meaning to the protagonist. The protagonist would hardly have a goal or conflict to resolve if it were not for the antagonist thwarting h,im or her.
Macduff: Antagonist to Macbeth
In Macbeth, the titular character, Macbeth, is the clear protagonist, and his opponent is Macduff. However, he is not just a protagonist; he is an anti-hero. With a conventional protagonist, the audience can sympathize and even root for them. This is not the case with Macbeth. He is a king slayer who is hell-bent on remaining in power at all costs.
After murdering King Duncan and seizing the Scottish throne, he goes on a killing spree to make sure that he remains in power. Lord Macduff is Thane of Fife and is portrayed as the righteous antagonist who is meant to avenge King Duncan. Shakespeare incorporates the opposition between Macbeth and Macduff masterfully.
Immediately after killing Duncan in Act 2, Scene 2, Macbeth is suffering from guilt and hears knocking at his door. In his sorry state of grief, he actually says out loud:
To know my deed ’twere best not know myself.
(Sound of knocking at the door)
Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.
The knocking doesn’t wake Duncan up. However, it symbolizes something much more potent than that. The person knocking at the door is Macduff. He is the one who discovers that Duncan has been killed. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have covered up the murder by blaming it on Duncan’s chamberlains or grooms, whom they have framed by smearing Duncan’s blood on. Macduff’s knocking then has symbolic significance. He is announcing himself as Macbeth's opposser and the one to avenge the killing of King Duncan, even if he doesn't know it yet. The two eventually become enemies, and Macbeth murders the wife, son, and servants of Macduff.
Even with the murder of Lady Macduff, we see a contrast between the house of Macbeth and the house of Macduff. The two wives act as foil characters against each other. Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to murder Duncan, even as he hesitates. She famously scolds him and questions his manhood: “Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor /As thou art in desire?” (Act 1, Scene 7).
In addition, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are a childless couple. We can go so far as to say that the barren marriage between the two represents a recurring motif of unnaturalness in the play. This is in contrast to the Macduff household. Lady Macduff makes an appearance in only one scene of the play, where she is murdered by assassins hired by Macbeth.
In the scene, she is with her son and, even faced with death, expresses confidence in the righteousness of her husband. When the murderers ask where her husband is, she answers: “I hope, in no place so unsanctified / Where such as thou mayst find him” (Act 4, Scene 2). Lady Macduff seems to suggest here that her husband is so righteous that he exists on a moral plane, where he cannot be touched or harmed by Macbeth and his agents. Christian concepts of moral virtue are not explicitly stated in Macbeth; however, they are implicit.
Members of the Macbeth household frequently use language that suggests hiding from the eyes or sight of heaven. For example, Lady Macbeth in a famous soliloquy, prays to the night to hide the evil act of murder that she is planning from heaven:
Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry 'Hold, hold.' (Act 1, Scene 5)
Macbeth, thinking of a plan to gain the Scottish throne over the sons of King Duncan, says to himself, “Stars hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires” (Act 1, Scene 4). In the final showdown between Macduff and Macbeth, in which Macduff wins and decapitates his foe, Macduff announces himself and addresses Macbeth with the following words: “Turn, hell-hound, turn!” (Act 5, Scene 8).
Lastly, Macbeth is emboldened into believing that he cannot be killed by any mortal enemies because of a witch’s prophecy that no man born of a woman could kill him or have power over him. Before the fight to the death with Macbeth, Macduff reveals that he “was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (Act 5, Scene 8). This means he was born via cesarean section, which, technically speaking, means that he was not born of a woman.
In short, we are witnessing an almost cosmic struggle between the forces of heaven and hell. We can say that Macduff was born to defeat Macbeth. It’s as if their fates were written in the stars. Just as Macbeth destroys everything in his path with his unnatural sense of morality and bloodthirstiness, Macduff, the antagonist, was born of unnaturalness and is the perfect answer to cancel out the havoc that Macbeth wreaks.
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Hamlet: When the protagonist is his own antagonist
In Hamlet, the obvious antagonist is King Claudius, the evil uncle who kills his own brother to gain both his throne and wife, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. However, Hamlet's own overthinking, hesitation, and inaction are as much of an antagonist as is King Claudius.
Hamlet suffers from both the fatal flaw of the tragic hero and an internal conflict. His internal conflict can be defined as a struggle between his righteous desire as a son to take action to avenge his father’s death and his natural inclination“to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Act 3, Scene 1) in his mind without taking action. This tendency toward inaction based on overthinking is also his fatal flaw. One of the recurring motifs in the play is that of poison/death through the ear or words.
Such a motif in Hamlet is implied from the fact that his father is most likely poisoned through the ear as he slept. Ophelia, his love interest, is driven to depression and suicide after being insulted with words by Hamlet, and Hamlet can be described as having been poisoned by the ghost of his father, who informs him that King Claudius killed him.
It would have been better for Hamlet if he had never been informed of this news. The knowledge drives him insane. If he were of a different personality, more prone to action, he might have benefited from it and formed a plot to quickly take revenge on behalf of his father.
However, he overthinks, comes up with a bunch of convoluted and unnecessary plots, and doesn’t take the chance to avenge his father when it presents itself to him. A good example of this is when he catches Claudius praying and hesitates to kill him in Act 3, Scene 3. He begins with sound logic:
Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying,
And now I’ll do ’t. (He draws his sword.)
And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
However, Hamlet proceeds to reason himself out of such resolve. He believes that if Claudius is killed while praying, then Claudius’s soul will ascend to heaven, which he believes is unjust, as Claudius should burn in hell. Instead, he feels it would be best to catch Claudius while he is sinning, such as “When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage / Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed.” No such chance presents itself again throughout the play. The play ends in a bloody mess with Hamlet being poisoned, alongside his mother, before he eventually kills Claudius.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, August 05). What Is an Antagonist? | Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/antagonist |
