Within the whole of Greek literature, the terms protagonist and antagonist are amongst the most well known when analyzing the role of characters within a story. Ingrained within the human condition, there seems to be a desire to identify concepts, motivations and even people as good or bad. Interestingly, on the Ancient Greek theater stage, it was common practice for the antagonist to always enter the scene from the left side of the stage, thus subconsciously guiding the audience towards the association of the hero with literal and metaphorical rightness as the origin song for their character.
Certainly the majority of us find comfort, in residing on the clearly defined edges of a spectrum, rather than wading into the abstract and undefined gray middle land. It’s definitely easier and more comfortable to identify things as black or white, good or evil, rather than attempt to classify and navigate their complexities.
A less considered character within literary identification might be that of the deuteragonist. The deuteragonist can serve as both a protagonist and antagonist within the story. One might argue their corresponding labels have less to do with their actual actions or interactions with the other characters and more to do with the reader’s perception of their actions and interactions that allow them to remain fluidly undefined.
Some of the more famous deuteragonists within literature would be Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Dr. James Watson, and perhaps most infamously Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. The deuteragonist can often shape the story itself as well as our perceptions of the other characters by refusing to function under the influence of pre-conceived notions.
Years ago, the father invented a banter style exchange with the boy, which the mother simply referred to as the favorites game. The game involved the father asking the same question of the boy, “who is your favorite….mommy or daddy?” Extra emphasis was always placed, the mother felt, on the word, daddy. The little boy would smile and say, “daddy!” At which point, the father would erupt in laughter and subsequent cheerful and anticipated interactions with the boy. The boy loved the game, the mother always felt, more for his father’s reaction than any true understanding of the actual meaning of the word favorite.
As the years passed, the father and the boy attempted to engage the girls in the merriment of the favorites game. One morning at breakfast, the father, directed his rather loaded question to the group, “who… is your favorite?” The boy, of course now much older and wiser, is a veteran of the game and quickly hops up onto a nearby dinning room chair while shouting, “daddy….daddy is my favorite.” The brunette’s eyes grow very wide with the evident excitement surrounding the game. She scans back and forth between the mother and the father and senses intuitively this is the perfect opportunity to garner some favor from her father. Quickly the brunette chimes in with “daddy is my favorite too.” The baby is more focused on the fine motor skills needed to successfully navigate the Cheerios on the tray in front of her than any dialogue that seems to be bantering around her in that moment.
The mother simply rolls her eyes and then turns her gaze in the direction of the blonde. The blonde, not one to be exceptionally verbal in the early morning hours of the day, has been watchful of the entire interchange. She brushes her hair back out of her face, and says, “well….mommy is my…. most favorite.” The mother observes her eyes narrow ever so slightly as she casts a subtle challenging glance towards the father in an evident playful defiance of the game. “What!?!” the father replied. The mother is quite certain this is exactly the reaction the blonde had wanted to achieve. The blonde smiles and then shovels a large spoonful of cereal into her mouth, most certainly in an attempt to avoid the need to justify her response.
The mother has observed the blonde appears to prefer to live in the more undefined influencer verses influenced space as the family’s deuteragonist.
The clearest instance of the blonde’s avoidance of predictable conformity is often highlighted in social settings, as the mother finds herself struggling to help the blonde navigate new and stretching situations outside of the confines of the family home. Often taking approximately 37 minutes to warm up to any new surrounding, the blonde will not be persuaded to prematurely enter into any form of forced social pleasantries until she elects to do so herself. The mother finds she is often apologizing for the perceivable antisocial scowling, hooded-eye glaring, arms-crossed posturing being demonstrated by the blonde…..labeling it instead as shyness. This labeling technique seems to appease other adults sufficiently enough to allow them to shift their attention away from the blonde, for the time necessary for her to adapt to her new surroundings.
The mother has even noted, when the blonde thinks no one is looking, she actually forcibly holds back a sincere smile in an attempt not to give others the satisfaction of her amusement or approval before she is in fact ready to do so, unprompted. The mother is quite certain that the blonde’s chosen guarded interaction with others has less to do with any form of actual emotional shyness and more to do with the blonde’s intellectual refusal to grant others the power to define her behavior within a social setting.
The mother has observed that the blonde’s resistance to be defined by social mores might in fact grant her the freedom to blossom as a deuteragonist.
Perhaps the most amusing example to the mother of the blonde’s atypical world perception, occurred last year on Halloween. It was the blonde’s first year participating in the ritually accepted custom of going door to door to her neighbor’s homes, with parents not only allowing their children to break one of the greatest childhood rules….not accepting candy from strangers, but chauffeuring them through the ritual act itself under the cloak of darkness.
The father took both the blonde, who had decided that she wanted to be a bee for the event, and the boy, who much to the mother’s chagrin, refused to select a heroic or traditional costume, instead electing to go as Darth Maul, a dark and sinister Star Wars character, possessing a double sided light saber as his weapon of choice.
Not long after leaving the house, the children returned, bags brimming with treasures and stories of their adventures to share with their mother. The boy quickly informed the mother, that the father had taken them to the haunted porch, an attraction manifesting full commitment by one neighbor to truly embrace all the scary and creepy components of the day. It was there that the children encountered several characters, not the least of which was a witch. The mother of course rolled her eyes and cast a glance at the father as if to say, “really?…..you realize you will be the one getting up with them tonight when this haunted porch decision comes back to haunt us all.”
Instantly the mother was shaken from her silent diatribe when the blonde asked, “Do you know that witch?” The mother looked at the blonde and could visibly see the gears turning in the blonde’s head. The look on the blonde’s face was one of focus coupled with concern. The mother, who had no clue where this dialogue would take them, replied “the one from our neighborhood?” “Yes,” the blonde replied nodding, “I don’t think she has very many friends.” The mother felt a little lump catch in her throat….this was adorable. Here the mother had been concerned the witch and all her darkness would scare the blonde, when in fact it did quite the opposite, the witch stirred up compassion in the blonde. “I think I could be her friend,” the blonde finished. “I think that would be very nice…..everyone needs a friend,” the mother concurred. The blonde smiled.
That night as the mother readied the children for bed, the blonde yet again mentioned the friendless witch and how she hoped to talk with her the next day. The mother didn’t have the heart to break it to her that in just a few short hours the haunted porch would have found itself returned to its normal, sleeping, southern style, wrap around condition and the highly intriguing witch would be replaced by a much less mysterious middle aged woman who enjoys gardening.
Tucking the children into bed, the mother asked, ” what story shall we read tonight?” “The Three Little Pigs!” the boy shouted. (The mother makes a mental note to research the psychological condition and desire children seem to possess in regards to compulsive repetition. Even after raising children for several years it still boggles the mother’s mind how children can watch the same movie or read the same story hundreds of times and strangely return to it eagerly as if being reconnected with an old friend.) “I think we have read that enough this week, and I’m pretty sure you could tell me the entire story at this point,” the mother replies. The blonde, looking pensively at the bookshelf, quickly said, “I think maybe Beauty and the Beast…..because the beast just wants someone to like him.” The mother is by now quite certain it takes a child with a special heart to feel compassion for the beast rather than being caught up only by the allure of beauty.
The mother realized in that moment that the blonde’s ability to see people for who they are, verses what they have been labeled was truly a power only possessed by a deuteragonist.
And so it was that as the family laughed and joked that morning, at the father’s game of who the children deemed their most favorite parent, the mother realized that what she had often perceived as elective silence on the part of the blonde was in fact a calculated perception of the people and events surrounding her. The blonde, seemed to be able to navigate both her own perceptions and her perceptions of others not through a black and white bias or even rose colored glasses but instead through a much less utilized canopy of illuminating grays.
The Motherhood in Technicolor Memo: If you happen to find you are raising a deuteragonist, or impact character, you might notice they often listen more than they speak, cheer constantly for the underdog, refuse to waiver to social pressure, attempt to bring home stray animals, gravitate towards work in progress playmates, possess a stubborn level of conviction, assume movie villains are simply misunderstood characters, and constantly challenge those around them. While this child will certainly excel as a confident, independent adult, navigating them through their formative years could be very challenging. The child’s desire to dictate their own story might clash with your perceptions as parents of socially comfortable character qualities. The important thing to keep in the back of your mind is, it isn’t about what side of the stage from which your child may choose to enter. It’s about the impact they make on those around them once their performance is underway.
Summer Smith is a speaker, writer, and motherhood blogger. She and her family are currently navigating the suburbs of Northern Virginia. As the mother to four young children, Summer maintains her sanity thanks to her sense of humor, copious amounts of coffee, and Amazon Prime. Maya Angelou once said, when reflecting on her childhood, that her mother left an impression like technicolor stars in the midnight sky. Influenced by these words, Summer blogs at her website Motherhood in Technicolor, and can also be found on her Motherhood in Technicolor Facebook page.