Today we live in a post-modern world, where people have somehow deduced – against all the rules of logic – that right and wrong are relative.
Current philosophy says you must justify why your antagonist is making the choices he’s making. Years ago, I took a course on philosophy that literally challenged the modernist mindset, and soundly defeated post-modernism long before it ever took hold of the public imagination.
The Instructor explained we make choices based upon our advantages. We choose the least painful of consequences, and if a situation offers us advantage, we make conscious choices to take those advantages as opposed to suffering loss.
Want to know what drives your antagonist? Greed. Power. Wealth. Fame. Control. Is he this way because someone splashed acid on his face? His mother didn’t let him watch TV? Missed dessert at the age of six?
No, he’s this way because he chose to be. I can take every last antagonist in every book out there and explain his choice making this way. Francis Dollarhyde did have mental illness – but he chose his actions based upon his values. Hannibal Lector? Same thing. Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb? Same thing.
They chose to do the things they did. Here’s the key – if your antagonist plans anything, he has made deliberate choices to be evil.
That’s why they’re antagonists.
Like the psychic killer on the X-Files – He claims to be on the search for the one person who will explain why he’s a killer. He meets the one man, and the man tells him (with some impatience), “You don’t know? It’s so obvious! You’re killing people because you’re a homicidal maniac!”
There’s no shame in saying, “Edward ‘Black Beard’ Teach chose to be a pirate, to steal and murder because he was motivated by greed, power, wealth, control.”
Why is your antagonist a killer? He seeks to gain something by killing. Why did he do it? He’s evil. Making evil choices makes you evil.
Should you justify why your antagonist is evil? A lot of people say you have to. I don’t buy it. He may be trying to justify it to himself. But what it boils down to is – he, like the protagonist, is making choices. Your choices determine who and what you are.
So, your antagonist is evil because he chooses to be – just as your protagonist is good because they are choosing to be.
Now take the energy and time you would have put into finding why your antagonist is evil into writing, and don’t feel guilty about creating a world with an evil antagonist.
