No Antagonist / Literature

By Author

• Isaac Asimov
  • Dr Asimov's works often have no antagonist. Partly this is because he dislikes writing villains. He once said that he feels that no one sees themselves as a villain, so he tried to write his stories to reflect that. He still has some sympathetic antagonists, such as The Mule. Mostly he seems to find impersonal problems like social collapse more interesting than problems caused by a character.
  • "The Bicentennial Man": This story is a Person vs Society conflict, with Andrew Martin's 200-year quest to become human being thwarted by humanity in general being apathetic at best to his dreams, and often actively resentful that he'd demand to be treated as an equal. Even the incident with the youths serves more to illustrate how society doesn't respect Andrew's rights than to build conflict.
  • "Breeds There a Man...?": The conflict is all internal; Dr Ralson is attempting suicide yet doesn't actually want to die. Although he claims these suicidal tendencies come from aliens, there isn't any strong evidence for his claim. The main conflict in the book comes from the other characters trying to help him recover so that he can complete his work on force fields.
  • "Flies": There is no enemy to face, there isn't even any sort of conflict resolved. While the flies bother Casey, it isn't malevolence (it is reverence). The three friends have drifted apart after twenty years of little-to-no contact.
  • "Lenny": The conflict in this story is between Lanning (Research Director) and Calvin (Robopsychologist). Lanning is dealing with two problems; the LNE model has violated the First Law by breaking someone's arm, and they aren't getting enough high-level job applications. Calvin is insistent that Lenny has not violated First Law, and rationalizes her work with the prototype in a way to help Lanning encourage high-level job applications by appealing to people's sense of danger. Once she's left, Bogart points out to Lanning that Calvin is trying to Mother Bear the prototype, having taught it to call her "Mommie".
  • "My Son, the Physicist": There is no enemy to face; the aliens are hypothetical at best and a Greater-Scope Villain at worst. The conflict is how to communicate between Earth and Pluto despite the radio lag of about six hours in each direction.
  • "...That Thou Art Mindful of Him": The conflict of the story comes from the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation fighting back against Earth's Ban on A.I.. All of the characters who appear in this story are working with US Robots, and it is that nebulous society that they're fighting against.
• Arthur C. Clarke quite often had stories like this, and never had a true villain; in any case where there was someone who seemed to be a villain, they'd turn out to be misunderstood more often than not. Averted by Hammer of God, which has religious fanatics trying to sabotage a project to save the Earth from an asteroid.
• A lot of H. P. Lovecraft stories as well. It's easy to overlook or forget that very few of them actually have villains as opposed to horrific sights, beings, or facts with a Blue-and-Orange Morality to them if there is any moral dimension going on at all.
• Kurt Vonnegut has stated that none of his novels have a villain.
  • Cat's Cradle has no antagonist in spite of the ending.
  • Slaughterhouse-Five doesn't have any antagonists in spite of being largely set in a Nazi prison camp.
  • Subverted in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which features an uncharacteristically melodramatic villain in the seedy lawyer Norman Mushari.
• Connie Willis novels often lack an antagonist:
  • To Say Nothing of the Dog is about solving a time-traveling mystery, and no one is working against them.
  • Doomsday Book is about a mystery involving plagues that are occurring concurrently in the Middle Ages and the future-present. No one is working against the protagonists as they try to deal with the plagues.

By Work

• The companion novels and the epilogue novel in the Addicted Series are character driven and don't have an antagonist or even an overarching plot.
• The only major conflict of The Blue-Nosed Witch is Blanche wanting to get to the Halloween Flight Meeting with Scurry 13 on time. There's the short conflict with Child Hater Skinner, but he doesn't get in the way of Blanche's need to get to the meeting on time and mostly just serves to be cantankerous and nasty.
• In Breakfast at Tiffany's, everything that happens to Holly Golightly happens because she's Holly Golightly.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has no characters who are directly working against other characters. What it does have are the four bratty kids, who are so obnoxious and selfish that they serve as Hate Sinks. Even in adaptations that make the kids genuinely mean/cruel to others, they remain too self-absorbed to directly oppose them— protagonist Charlie Bucket least of all. As they journey through the titular factory-cum-wonderland, the brats manage to take themselves out of the running of a Secret Test by disregarding Willy Wonka's warnings in favor of going after things they want, not realizing how dangerous those things can be. Mr. Wonka has No Sympathy for the brats when they get their comeuppances, and it is suspicious that he's showing off so many things that play right into their vices, but on the other hand, he tries to get them back to normal where possible. (At worst, he's an Anti-Hero, which is how the 2013 stage musical portrays him.) The book is often criticized for lacking real drama and/or Charlie becoming a Useless Protagonist owing to this process-of-elimination structure, so adaptations tend to tweak the plot to make him more proactive in his fate.
• Circleverse: Three of the books in the original Circle of Magic quartet have no villains. The kids fight some bullies in a couple scenes of Sandry's Book as well, but it's a side issue, not the main conflict. Instead, the kids face an earthquake, ill-managed wildfires, and a plague.
• Individual stories of Diary of a Wimpy Kid are like this, despite the series itself having recurring antagonists:
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days: Greg's mother is shown as the instigator of conflict, but she acts more as a recurring obstacle.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul: The conflict comes from all the horrible luck that they have on their road trip. Beardo, the only "villainous" figure is... well, not. Most of the interactions Greg and his family have with him and his family are also tied into the bad luck, and his actions can be justified by his anger, even if he does take things too far at times.
• Jane Austen's Emma. Emma herself drives the plot with her well-meaning though overbearing attempts to get her protégé Harriet properly married.
• Most of the Dinotopia YA books are either Slice of Life travelogues or else deal with natural disasters such as pathogens or landslides. In most of them, if there are any hostile creatures at all, they tend to be merely territorial and treated as obstacles rather than plot-driving enemies.
• Enoch Arden: The main story is a love triangle where each of the people involved is sympathetic and well-meaning.
• Father Brown: The short story "The Absence of Mr Glass" potentially sets up either the titular Mr Glass or the student James McNabb who has a deeply hidden secret that he may be being blackmailed over as the antagonist of the story. It's revealed that neither is the antagonist, James McNabb is just a stage magician and entertainer who has been practising in secret to protect his tricks, and Mr Glass doesn't actually exist (his fiancee just heard him practising juggling and saying "Missed a glass".
  • There's also 'The Honour of Israel Gow' where the unusual events surrounding the death of the Earl of Glengyle, including the lord's missing skull have a rational and benign explanation. (He left all his gold to his servant Israel Gow, who took this literally as all his gold and nothing else, including his gold tooth)
  • The Three Tools of Death as well features no actual antagonist. The only death occurs from suicide and the behaviours of all the other characters stem from them either trying to protect each other or misunderstanding the situation.
• A Fly Went By: The majority of the animals, plus the man, were only running in fear from what they thought was an adversary. It is eventually traced back to a sheep with a can on its hoof, who didn't mean to scare the man.
• The Frontier Magic series has no sapient antagonist. Monsters do show up, but they're all just wild animals from the unexplored frontier.
• Girls Kingdom almost never has any character that can be called an antagonist in its myriad stories, mostly focusing more mundane, slice of life activities like what Misaki should do with her first paycheck or how she helps get Erisu's on-campus restaurant to actually be popular. On the rare occassion that there is someone that could be called an antagonist, they're usually in the background and focused more on their issues with someone else.
• Goosebumps usually has plenty of villains to make life harder for the kid heroes, but now and then the events of the book are not caused by any malevolent forces.
  • My Hairiest Adventure: The strange transformations of Larry and his friends are because the process keeping them human is wearing off. While evolving animals into humans is rather ethically questionable, the scientists behind the experiment are just regular people who haven't perfected their formula yet.
  • How I Learned To Fly: The plot is about the competition of two boys who gain flying powers to get a girl's affection, as well as the pressures of fame and power.
• The Hatchet books are firmly in the "character vs environment" category, focused on the difficulty of obtaining food, water, and shelter in a remote wilderness. There are occasionally problems with wild animals, but nothing sapient.
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has the Villain Protagonist plotting against Christmas itself with no physical opponent. He tries to steal Christmas from the Whos, but they're unaware of his plan until they discover everything gone^note one little girl catches the Grinch in the act but only asks why "Santa" is stealing a Christmas tree and is satisfied by his answer, and largely indifferent even then.
• It's Kirby Time: No character makes any trouble for anyone else in Take Courage or Kirby's Tiny World.
• Little Women: The conflict of the Coming of Age Story comes from four sisters trying to navigate the ups and downs of life as they learn about the world, relationships, society, and their role in it.
• The Martian is about a stranded astronaut trying to survive the environment of Mars, while literally everyone on Earth comes together to try to get him home. There are conflicts concerning the best way to save him, but even on an international level, everyone is working towards keeping him alive and bringing him home safely.
• In the Miss Bindergarten series, and most children's books by Rosemary Wells.
• While the books of the original The Mysterious Benedict Society series have a very obvious and real antagonist in Mr. Ledroptha Curtain, the prequel book The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict has an interesting twist. Mr. Collum, the orphanage director, seems like a very powerful antagonist to Nicholas. However, Mr. Collum is really just a troubled and stubborn man who doesn't understand children very well and lacks creativity. In the end, Mr. Collum turns out to be a very powerful ally once Nicholas comes to understand him and once he's able to get him on his side.
• Nate the Great: Most of the stories involve Nate looking for lost objects or animals that were misplaced through sheer happenstance, with no malicious intent from anyone.
• Ultimately, if the characters in Palimpsest are struggling with anything, it's their own psychology. The creatures they encounter in Palimpsest actually want them to come and make it as easy as possible.
• The Secret Garden: No bad guys. Just two spoiled children bettering themselves through The Power of Friendship.
• Seeker Bears, another Erin Hunter series has no main villain (and no villains after book two) and instead features the bear protagonists as they fight global warming.
• There is no real antagonist in "De skandalösa" by Simona Ahrnstedt. Gabriel's father was abusive, but he is now dead. It is revealed that Peter Cronstedt is a jerk, but you can hardly call him a villain. The plot is more about the different couples getting to know each other (and having a lot of sex).
• Whereas Sky Jumpers had a gang of bandits invade Hope's town to steal their antibiotics, the sequel, Forbidden Flats, has no real villains in it. The conflict stems from Luke's determination to find the City Of Metal often causing more problems for them than they really need.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Death Star has no single primary villain. It focuses on an Ensemble Cast of ordinary Imperial citizens and soldiers who have been hired or shanghaied aboard the first Death Star over a several-year period. The Rebel Alliance is present and attacks the construction site once prior to Yavin 4, but has little characterization, and none of them particularly like the Empire, but it's a job. Until Alderaan. At that point, several cast members start making plans to defect to the Rebellion, and steal a shuttle during the Battle of Yavin.
  • Junior Jedi Knights: The first four books don't have any antagonists besides some dangerous predators (although one in Lyric's World gets a decent amount of page-time and It Can Think characterization). Anakin and Tahiri spend the first three books trying to free the spirits of several children who the Sith Lord Exar Kun imprisoned, but Kun met his final defeat back when Anakin was a baby, so he has no direct role in the series.
• Toradora! is just about two people (Ryuuji and Taiga) having crushes on other people (Kushieda and Kitamura, respectively), which also happens to be the other's best friend, so they attempt to help each other hook up with their respective crushes. The whole conflict boils down to "the people crushing on other people start to love each other on a deeper level and trying to cope with their feelings", which isn't caused by a person. The only truly mean character is Kawashima, but she's more of an Alpha Bitch who doesn't do anything truly villainous and eventually warms up to the protagonists.
• Tortall Universe: Tempests and Slaughter, the first book of The Numair Chronicles, only has a villain in the climax, with no real antagonist throughout the story overall. The series' status as an interquel with the Foregone Conclusion that will ensue means that this won't hold for the rest of the books, however.
• Whatever conflict there is in the La Vita Nuova is driven by the narrator's fears, passions, and weaknesses. He has only himself to blame when his lady refuses to speak to him, when he mistakes base attractions for love, and when he finds himself unable to handle the death of the most beautiful woman on Earth.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Warrior Cats: Power of Three: rather than having a main villain to be defeated, features the protagonists struggling with the meaning of a prophecy about them.
  • Hollyleaf's Story, Mistystar's Omen, and Leafpool's Wish are all devoid of villains.
• When You Reach Me is about the usual goings-on of a sixth grader and her relationship with her mother as well as her friendships combined with the mystery of who was writing her the notes.
• Wintergirls has no concrete, definitive antagonist, because Lia is her own worst enemy — her lingering guilt over not having prevented her ex-best friend Cassie's death, combined with her self-destructive anorexia, are destroying her from the inside out. Everyone around her is trying to help her recover, but she either pushes them away or lies to them so they'll think she's getting better. An imaginary version of Cassie appears in Lia's head as a Toxic Friend Influence and Spirit Advisor, encouraging her to eat less and less until she disappears, but even she is essentially a personification of Lia's guilt and self-loathing, so when Lia imagines Cassie talking to her, it's Lia talking to herself.
• Zahrah in Zahrah the Windseeker goes off on quite the splendid adventure, but if she has an opponent, it's a combination of the jungle and her people's ignorance.

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