Journal: Generic Everyman Protagonist

Journal: Generic Everyman Protagonists

by

Paul Adams

So, today I want to talk about the “Generic Everyman Protagonist” common in fiction, or for sake of brevity, the G.E.P. The most notable representatives pf this of course being Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Frodo Baggins, and Luke Skywalker in movies and books, and most of the protagonists of video games. Now these characters can come in all shapes and sizes, though they are often the most common ethnicity in the country of the work's origin, and are often male though there are more than a few females in this role ( a surprisingly high amount in manga and anime, see: Lucy in Fairy Tale). Hence the reason for the four examples listed above all being white males as they are the best known to an American audience. I will be getting into this more later.

Now, the “Generic Everyman Protagonist” exists primarily in the science fiction or fantasy genre but can crop up in other genres. Their purpose in most cases is to give the audience a “lowest common denominator” of sorts to relate to, a center of stability and familiarity to see this strange new world through. In some ways, the basic-ness of their character is their greatest strength. If you are trying to show your audience this vast world or concept that you’ve created, you don’t want them to be constantly distracted because their proxy in the world has way too much going on.

Before I get started, there are a couple of troublesome factors involved. Like I pointed out earlier, many of these types of characters are often white straight males (in Western media, at least). Whether this is whitewashing or social whatever is not something I want to tackle here, but it does feed into the concept brought up in the preceding paragraph, about them having too much going on. Often, but not always, if your protagonist is female, she tends to carry into the story a certain degree of feminist angle. Instead of being first and foremost an observer of the world around her, most of the audience will want her to be a role model, an action hero, the center of the plot's attention at all times, and the writer will factor that in, and as a result, the world that they're supposed to be showing us will not be as developed. The same can be said for a dark-skinned protagonist, homosexual protagonist, or otherwise. Whether you support the causes or not, this can the quickest way to distract from the world you’re trying to present, or such characters and issues can be easily mishandled and authors will avoid them just so they don’t cause more problems. That said, that trend seems to be changing as “G.E.P.s” such as Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games and Rey and Finn of the newest Star Wars film did a solid job of filling their role without getting bogged down in these ways.

Another point of contention arises when you use this kind of character to explore other real life cultures, to present a culture your intended audience may not be familiar with by using a G.E.P. they can relate to. Such examples are The Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves. These kinds of stories will often be criticized for “racial appropriation,” especially if the G.E.P., rather than simply experiencing this culture they’re unfamiliar with and connecting to it, rises through the ranks of the culture and becomes their “best” member, their chief or chosen one or hero. This is understandable in some respects, as the hierarchy or fighting styles of the culture are often an important part of said culture, and letting the G.E.P. rise through the ranks lets them experience the culture on all levels, and narratively, it can give structure or purpose to your plot. I think, in the end, it just requires balance. And even if you take them to the upper echelons of the culture, try to avoid placing them at the very top if you can.

Now that the touchy subjects are out of the way, let’s focus on what makes Harry, Frodo, Percy, and Luke work but not others. I think it is a common misconception that because your protagonist is a G.E.P., that means that you don’t have to try with their characters. That you can just place the character in position, have them say the right things and ask the right questions, and that’s it. But I think it’s the opposite. I think the G.E.P. may be the most important character to get right. If you are supposed to experience the world through their eyes, then you are going to need them to be as human as they possibly can be. They need to feel the world around them. They need to care about the world around them. If the reader is to truly live within the world the author is presenting them, they need to feel it the way the G.E.P. character feels it. If the protagonist is simply walking through this “interesting world” of theirs and just kind of staring at it all without feeling any of it, the reader is not going to feel any of it. Although the G.E.P. may have the least going on, plot and characterwise, they need to be the most vibrantly human character in your story. Because in the end, the plot and world is their story, so they have to fill it with every ounce of emotion and feeling that they can.

Harry, Frodo, and Percy were all book characters first, so we were in their heads more than in other mediums. The world of Hogwarts only came to life for readers because it came to life for Harry. After living his life in a broom cupboard, the astonishment he felt exploring every last inch of his new magical world exceeded what would have been felt by almost anyone else, and that wonder came across in every last detail he took in. Frodo had lived his entire life in the sheltered community of the Shire, so every step he took beyond it was filled with terror and uncertainty about this vast world far different from his idyllic home. Percy had a wit and charm to his narration that colored the world that he explored, easing the tension that came with his cliché story arc and ensured that the old Greek myths he stumbled across were firmly translated into something a modern audience would understand.

Luke Skywalker on the other hand is a movie character first and foremost, and so the audience is not inside his head as much as they were inside Harry’s or Frodo’s or Percy’s. But the same principles still apply. Luke was a dreamer, a man who had lived his whole life on a barren farm, and could only imagine what was beyond the stars. When he stepped beyond his world, he was constantly learning and interacting with his new world. Though sometimes he was whiny and stubborn about learning it, he still had a sense of wonder and curiosity that allowed him to see as much of it as he could.

Now, I want to talk about the history of the G.E.P. in video games because theirs is an interesting history. For up to about the turn of the last century in video games, the sole purpose of the game was the gameplay mechanics themselves, and any plot was kept as basic as possible. This is the main reason for the longevity of the character Mario, as his creator Shigeru Miyamoto has continually gone out of his way to keep Mario as basic as possible, focusing on gameplay first, and simply adjusting him to fit whatever new game mechanics they came up with. Some games ended up as duds, but none ever truly hindered Mario’s success overall. Other games trying to compete with Mario, such as Sonic or Bubsy, were created as marketable characters first, and then had games built around them, and their success was often hindered by that fact.

Other games, especially the Role-Playing Game genre and occasionally the Action Adventure genre, including such franchises as Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy, will intentionally go out of their way to make the player character as generic and unremarkable as possible, letting you name the character yourself and never having the character talk, so that you, the player, can then fill the character with your own personality and interests, so that you can “role-play” as them, if you will. In some ways, this is the best use of the G.E.P. for the video game genre, as the purpose of a G.E.P. in the first place is to give the audience someone to explore the world through, and in an interactive medium such as video games, you are the one exploring the world, so adding unnecessary personality will just get in the way more than it will help.

Around the turn of the last century, late 1990s to early 2000s, video games started to become far more cinematic as technology improved and creators were able to do more with what they had, and characters became more human and fleshed out than simple iconic cartoon animals. As more and more intricate stories and depth were added, video games became more akin to movies, but with an added element of your own involvement. This led to an interesting growth in the G.E.P. as creators learned new ways of giving the main character personality while allowing the player to still explore the world in their own way and make their own choices. Some games, such as Mass Effect and Undertale, featured massively branching storylines that made every choice you make matter, and no single playthrough of the games was ever the same twice, and the personality of the player character was slightly altered in each storyline to match the choices the player made, ranging from complete monster to noble hero and every shade in between. Interactive storytelling in video games has changed the G.E.P. into a fusion of generic and complex by allowing the player to determine just what kind of person their character is.

So, this has been a wide look at the “Generic Everyman Protagonist” and the problems and qualities contained therein, and the way they have impacted and been impacted by the mediums they appear in. They are something to remember for my writing, especially as Gavin bears many similarities to these types of protagonists. I don’t know if books or movies will ever be able to accomplish the same kind of level games have taken G.E.P.s to, but I suppose that’s why we have these different types of mediums. But I think we can learn from all forms of storytelling in order to make our own better.

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