Passive Protagonists

Prisoners of their own story?

Mar 02, 2023

We often assume that what makes a fascinating person also makes an engrossing protagonist—that the person whose interests and challenges most invest us makes an ideal subject for the 70,000+ words of fiction we ask readers to embark on. But, when we drill down on what makes a human, and therefore a character, interesting, are there hard and fast truths?

Writing advice, courses, and literary theory have for centuries—millennia even—proposed that there are. One of those truths is that a protagonist can’t be passive. At least, not the whole time. For a story to carry itself forward and reach a satisfying conclusion, the protagonist has to want something. It doesn’t totally matter what it is or why. It doesn’t matter if the want is a preexisting condition or develops later. What makes the story engaging is that the protagonist’s wish is thwarted somehow. She struggles internally or externally, either with this impediment or with the desire itself.

The protagonist’s story is often built upon either the action taken to overcome the impediment or to avoid the desire. This action can even be reactive at first. But eventually, she has to be active. If the protagonist does nothing, she is no longer a protagonist. She is scenery—a mannikin moved about on the stage of your setting to accessorize it and give it color. There is no story. Or, something else becomes the protagonist.

That’s the way I see it, anyway. But I’m curious to see what other writers and readers think.

Are “active” protagonists the next bogeyman?

I was baffled when I read this in a recent post (paywalled) by author Tim Lott on his Substack, Writing Boot Camp:

It has been suggested that this ‘active protagonist’ model is a red herring, even that it is a construct created by men to reflect a male way of being in the world
A Tool of the Patriarchy
I think this writer has a point. A novel can be carried by much other than a protagonist’s actions, desire or choices.

Is it? Can it? I’m no expert, but I have several problems with this, which I’m sure surprises no one ;-) This was my unsubtle response after reading the article linked in the post:

Good post, but I have to assure you that “active protagonists” are not a tool of the patriarchy (or “late-stage capitalism”). They’re a product of human evolutionary biology. People, male and female, have always had to take an active role in solving their problems to survive. What an insult to women to suggest otherwise. Just because the author is trying to validate her own passivity and wangst with wild theories and buzzwords, let’s not all assume that the natural and preferred state of womanhood is passivity or that regular people enjoy reading about characters who are proud not to have control of their lives. She asks, “What does it say about us as a society that we deem someone who is not a driving force in their life as unworthy of our attention?” It says: Stop trying to sell us on the virtues of submission!
Sorry for the rant. That article just really got under my skin ;-)

Too far? Haha. Maybe I got a little carried away. I should mention that I like Tim and the group at the Writing Boot Camp, but I don’t quite fit in there. Which is fine. Not everything can be a fit for everyone. I don’t comment much and keep it pretty bland, but this post—or the article it referenced—hit a nerve.

The author of the article, “Active Protagonists are a Tool of the Patriarchy,” Kelsey Allagood, claims that:

A good story, says common wisdom, is driven by the choices and desires of the main character. Passive protagonists, on the other hand, do not drive the plot through their choices and actions, but rather have the plot inflicted upon them.

So far, uncontroversial. This is not necessarily a recipe for a bad character or story. A character acted upon by outside forces is in a position ripe for internal or external conflict. The ensuing story—and the reader’s relationship with the character—largely depends on what the character thinks, feels, and does in the face of this powerful external machinery. Does she throw sand in the gears? Good, that’s action. Does she seek to avoid the conflict? That’s fair game; real people do this. But… if they never face the conflict, can we all agree that is a tragedy, in fiction as in life?

Don’t Ever Change

I think we all have that friend who is a perpetual doormat. For years we listen patiently to story after excruciating story of the self-inflicted turmoil they’ve subjected themselves to through some combination of poor life choices and inaction. Sometimes they justify these choices to themselves. Sometimes they simply can’t summon the will to break free of them. They take abuse from romantic partners, co-workers, family members, strangers. We see it. We want to help. Maybe we even try with some gentle encouragement.

How would we feel about reading a book like this where the protagonist not only never acts and never changes but blissfully never realizes the need to? Where the aim of the author is to vindicate this passivity?

Allagood says:

Frankly, I want to reclaim the passive protagonist as someone who resists the values we are told we should want in this late-stage capitalist society: success, recognition, money, dominance, control. That we should always be striving for more, better. What happens when we rebel against the idea that characters must be in the driver’s seat?

What a crock of shit. Firstly, let’s acknowledge the cognitive dissonance here. The author wants to claim that passivity and rebellion can be the same thing when they are literally opposites. Is passivity the negative result of “oppression” by the “active” patriarchy as she originally claims, or is it the positive action taken by those groups in opposition to said patriarchal oppression as she later tries to spin it? She doesn’t seem to know or can’t get her story straight. But she can’t have it both ways.

“Do Better”

The failure of a real person or a fictional character to be in the driver’s seat has nothing to do with their politics and everything to do with their personality. Sometimes those two are conjoined, but more often than not, it’s just the luck of the draw. We are who we are due to a myriad of factors. Great! That’s actual diversity. But actively campaigning against the inborn imperative “That we should always be striving for more, better” is evil. I’m not talking about having more stuff or power (though those things aren’t inherently wrong either)—I’m talking about growth as a human being. Who would argue against striving to be more honest, wise, kind? How about more confident? These are among our best aspirations. We can always be better. If we’re going to celebrate an opposition to self-improvement, we’ve embraced pure nihilism.

Or maybe some people believe they’re already perfect as they are…. That’s probably why they’re always exhorting everyone else to “do better”—they’re the finished product!

Weekend at Bernie’s?

Even if a character is powerless to act either due to internal inertia or external constraints, she still needs something to compel her through the story. She can’t simply exist as an inert lump amid the action around her. Otherwise, she’d be dead. And even ghosts supposedly have unfulfilled desires.

I can sympathize with the criticism that there is too much “girl power” in many stories today, and the strong female protagonist can be a touch overdone. Indeed, I think it’s overcompensating for something—more wish than fact born of our botched experiments in feminism. But by the same token, the remedy doesn’t have to be creating their nemeses.

I have nothing against weak or passive characters who reflect the realities of human experience and psychology in all its infinite facets. What I reject is the suggestion that we embrace them as models for life—that their acquiescence to others or to life generally is noble or exemplary.

My protagonist, Anaiti, spends quite a bit of time reacting to the dramatic circumstances thrust upon her before she begins to make difficult choices and take definitive actions. However, there’s never a moment in the story where she isn’t driven by powerful desires—for autonomy, respect, knowledge, etc. She’s often powerless, but far from passive.

Why is action coded masculine?

This author has decided to use the coded language of man-bashing to lend woke credibility to her article, despite her topic having nothing to do with men, because she knows that will play with a specific audience. What exactly is so “patriarchal” or masculine about wanting to control your own life and solve your own problems? Most normally functioning humans would find that kind of thinking deeply misogynistic. There’s a weird part in the article quoting another author who complains about the annoying habit that Western literature has (there we go again reflexively bashing the West) of having a dramatic arc that rises to a climax:

Bit masculo-sexual, no?

Not a story with a climax! Oh, the humanity! Apart from the fact that these modern feminists are obsessed with cock (see the deeply disturbed professor claiming that urban architecture literally assaults women with” upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky”—I wish I was joking), they seem sadly unaware of female biology. I suppose in their oppressed (repressed?) world, only mean males climax? I think it fits neatly with the rest of their narrative about the unimpressive, inactive lives they’re trying to justify to themselves and the world.

This formula of patriarchy = domination; femininity = passivity is false, but supposing for a minute that they’re right, femininity is truly as passive as they say, and real women are by nature as meek and submissive as they claim: Only by contamination of patriarchal fiction do some women have their minds polluted with notions of becoming active protagonists in their own lives.

Is this such a bad thing? I say, good for them! Viva la patriarchy! I’ll have what he’s having! Because being a demure damsel sucks ass. I don’t want to live like that or read sad stories about others who do. I want to read about all the inmates who punched their way out of that pretty little prison. I’ll take a double order of patriarchy over whatever the hell they’re peddling.

Lobotomies

But that’s me. A lot of people will go out of their way to hear stories that confirm to their choices in life. I recently read a horrifying article about a doctor, Walter Freeman, who performed lobotomies when science still thought they were a good idea. A lot of them. Then better treatments came along, and the ethics and value of scrambling people’s brains came into question, he could have stopped—he could have changed. But he became obsessed with proving his life’s work had not been in vain. He couldn’t face the prospect of having caused so much harm to so many people, and of investing his life in something so terrible, so he kept at it. And he spent his last years trying to prove its worth, defend his work, and disprove critics.

What if you have already put your reputation and your sanity on the line? Well, remember that even if it would be shattering to realize you’d made a terrible mistake, it would be far worse to keep making it.

Because the alternative was inconceivable, he doubled down. A lot of people live their lives this way, with lower stakes, perhaps, but just as much commitment. They tell themselves comfortable lies. They never break free of their emotional shackles because admitting that they wear them at all is too grim or shameful a reality to face. It’s easier to maintain a delusion than to build a new self from the shattered ruins of the old. When a passive person—or protagonist—refuses the call to change, they’re trapped living inside a ruin, pretending.

Maybe when you’re the passive character you need to tell yourself that you’re a rebel, an activist. That it’s outside rather than internal forces oppressing you. That your choices—or lack thereof—have been correct and you never need to change.

But when you’re the writer (or the doctor or scientist), lying to yourself in this way is not only sad, it hurts your work. It taints every conclusion you draw. If art just becomes an exercise in self-justification without self-examination—if it devolves into a bunch of political talking points and buzzwords with no truthful substance—what’s in it for the reader? Where is the art?

According to the article, Freeman violated physicist Richard Feynman’s first principle of science, which could also be the first principle of artists and writers:

You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

What do you think about passive protagonists?
Do you have a favorite passive protagonist from literature or film?
Did you read the article? What did you think of the author’s argument?