The heroine or hero provides the reader with perspective and focus on the story, point of view.
She or he also serves as the point of identification allowing the reader to invest her or his feelings towards care and concern for not simply the major character but also remaining with the story to see its outcome.
Every heroic protagonist must evolve. They grow and change. They accomplish this by facing obstacles and antagonists that strengthen and endow them with knowledge and information to achieve her or his goals.
Wisdom through experience. This is the protagonist’s challenge and goal.
A major character may present as hesitant in the beginning, reticent to meet the challenge manifested by the chaos that as ensues from the upheaval of order. But they cannot remain so. They must eventually gather their wits and will to survive, and move forward with action and relative decisiveness.
In making their sacrifice, the heroine or hero as symbol of the ego, becomes like the ego when undergoing the experience of a dream.
They enter the underworld of their greatest fears much like the ego sinks into the collective unconscious, and greets the various archetypes that roam the deeper internal landscape common to all humans that have ever, and do live.
Encountering these various aspects or masks of human experience, the ego and that of the protagonist surrenders its fears and learns to float upon the ocean of life. In so doing she/he and her/his ego feels less threatened.
The meaningful decisions and actions of the central character must always include sacrifice. They must give up that to which they attribute greatest valuable.
In most cases this treasured object has caused interminable pain. Their love of the object has caused the chaos that has ensued.
The sacrifice could be a strongly held belief, an object that holds great sentiment or nostalgia, or power, at least for the protagonist. It could also be their life.
The act of offering up, sacrifice, makes holy. It sanctifies the object, or belief. In surrendering their mortal life, the heroine or hero ensures their eternal salvation that they will live in the hearts and minds of humans–and readers–long after they are gone. Thus achieve the ultimate resurrection.
That of living in the memory of those whom they have encountered.
Who is your most memorable character from a movie or book you have either read or written? And why?
What is the one thing you want to know about all the characters you craft and create?