Why do we always root for the protagonist?

ErezMA

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I'm not sure this is the right place for this, but I feel the point of my question fits best with this genre.

Now I know the main story here. Good guy/gal sets out to do noble goal. People/circumstances get in the way and often times, the protagonist does what they needed to do.

But there are some cases in which case, there is someone evil who is the protagonist. The story that comes to mind is the anime Death Note in which a teenager comes across a book in which, when you write a name in it, that person will die. That person then sets out on the goal of killing every criminal so the world is a better place.

Now I don't believe that the majority of people would support executing everyone who has ever been to jail, however, I feel like most people are curious in how protagonists get out of difficult situations and want them to succeed; they don't want the opposing forces to get to them.

So I'm now scratching my head and asking, "Why?"

Is it just to get a good story? Do we have a little piece of morbid fantasies as long as they remain fantasies? Is there something else I'm missing?

Mods, if I posted this in the wrong spot, feel free to move it to the correct one.

Thanks!
 

Ari Meermans

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As long as a protagonist has a noble goal or a line he will not cross, readers will assume the temporary loss of his moral compass and will put up with a lot in the hope of seeing redemption. This makes for a far more interesting character than a "good guy" with a noble goal and a plan for achieving that goal that isn't nefarious . . . or morally questionable at times.
 
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frimble3

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If you get inside a character's head, show why they are doing what they do, people will become interested in them.
Even if what they are doing is crazy, ridiculous or just plain wrong-on-every-level, if you can show why they think the way they do, you can make the reader understand, if not excuse, their actions.

Your teenager who sets out to kill every criminal in the world, for example. Why? Why him? What happened to him to make him devote this magic book to, essentially, playing Batman? Was it something that actually happened to him? Family member or friend killed (the easy out - revenge)?
Was his parent a police officer who was either killed (again, easy out) or who was corrupted by the criminals he dealt with, or who killed himself after a particularly bad case? Heck, maybe the father was abusive to your character who rationalized that it's the fault of the criminals his father saw every day, rather than blame his father.

Or maybe your character's actual life is fine, but he sees crime everywhere, on-line, on TV, in books, across all media. Not to mention people telling stories. It just floods him, and he's too young to notice that not much of it happens near him.

Or, his vision of himself as a weakling and a coward is at odds with his preferred image, that of a brave, physically adept rescuer.

Here's the problem though - he has no training, or experience and all he knows is what he sees in the media.
He only knows the names of the handful of criminals he sees on the news. Many of them haven't been tried, let alone convicted. But, their names go into his book. Maybe he sees the shortcomings of this: what happens when he writes the generic 'bank robber' in the book? What happens when he writes an innocent's name?
What if he's just listening to talk? "The guy yelling into the camera said this guy defrauded him! Onto the list!"
Or, "That politician is voting against something that I want - bad man! List time!"

What if he starts making up 'crimes'? 'He looked at me funny', 'she sneered at me', 'he gave me a low grade for no reason'. Your guy is a teenager, after all.

Show how he gradually makes mistake over mistake, until, to someone who hasn't read his story, he's a monster, instead of a screwed-up kid, in over his head with powers he can't handle.
 

Albedo

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I can think of lots of protagonists I wanted badly to fail, while still being invested in their stories, and wanting to see how it all ended. Walter White, Humbert Humbert. I wasn't rooting for either, but found them both compelling. At the other end of the scale are the monsters you want to win (Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter, perhaps the guy from Death Note? Never read that.) In between, there's a spectrum of feelings we can have for villain protagonists. Maybe we hope they end up in jail, but find inner peace. Maybe we want them to get what they want, but feel unsatisfied about it. Lots of room for nuance.
 
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Lakey

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I can think of lots of protagonists I wanted badly to fail, while still being invested in their stories, and wanting to see how it all ended. Walter White, Humbert Humbert. I wasn't rooting for either, but found them both compelling. At the other end of the scale are the monsters you want to win (Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter, perhaps the guy from Death Note? Never read that.) In between, there's a spectrum of feelings we can have for villain protagonists. Maybe we hope they end up in jail, but find inner peace. Maybe we want them to get what they want, but feel unsatisfied about it. Lots of room for nuance.

I’ve got four words on this: The Talented Mr Ripley. There is a delicious frisson of cognitive dissonance about 3/4 of the way through where Tom Ripley, who has murdered two men and stepped into the identity of one of them, does something a little more reckless than usual, something that has the potential to expose him. As it happened the first time I read it, I thought, “Oh, Tom, don’t do that!” - and I almost had to put the book down for a minute, so surprised was I to find myself rooting for him. (I’m talking about Patricia Highsmith’s novel here; I haven’t seen the Matt Damon film adaptation and I don’t know that it captures the same feeling.)

And it’s not that Tom is terribly charismatic; he’s rather pathetic and repulsive, in fact, a self-hating, awkward, bitter misogynist whom even his own friends don’t particularly like. It’s a particularly masterful piece of writing, to create a protagonist like this and, using a tight third-person perspective, draw the reader far enough into his warped view of the world that he becomes sympathetic.

So I agree with Albedo - there are different kinds of stories, and not all of them have protagonists one cheers for. Although the best nuance comes when you find yourself cheering for the protagonist despite whatever is despicable about him or her.
 

Larry M

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I remember a few summers ago, when my wife and I were binge watching Breaking Bad. At some point in the first season, it suddenly hit me. I said, "you realize that Walter White is a bad guy, and we're rooting for him."

It surely made the writers/creator of the show smile as they knew that at some point, a large portion of the viewing audience would eventually start rooting for the drug dealer. The show was written in such a way as to create conflict not just among the characters, but the viewers.
 

ErezMA

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This is great stuff. I appreciated all your thoughts, everyone. :)
 

B.G. Dobbins

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I believe people need stories to have emotional experiences without actually having to go through the actual danger of it. We want a safe but emotional experience, and in order to do that we need to relate to a character on some level, otherwise there is no emotional experience. We don't care. That doesn't mean we have to like a character or agree with a character's actions, but we should be able to relate. I can relate to Light wanting to rid the world of bad people and can understand the temptation he faces after receiving the notebook. However, we begin to see him slip into dangerous territory when he kills to cover his tracks. We're already invested in him and want to know if he'll redeem himself or if he'll be his own undoing. If he did the noble thing and destroyed it without using it or after realizing it was for real, there wouldn't be an emotional experience, so there wouldn't be a story.
 

Paula Davids

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If you get inside a character's head, show why they are doing what they do, people will become interested in them.
Even if what they are doing is crazy, ridiculous or just plain wrong-on-every-level, if you can show why they think the way they do, you can make the reader understand, if not excuse, their actions.

I go with Frimble. Who cares what piece of protoplasm the protagonist is? If I know what decisions he/she/it has to make and what motivates it, I'm going to invest. Anyway, isn't 'protagonist' the character you invest in by definition, irrespective of moral or any other traits?
 

Curlz

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We root for the protagonist because that's how the story was written. Readers are being manipulated to like that character. That's what good writing is, it puts ideas in our heads. That's why we talk about character arcs, internal thoughts, the function of description, emotional writing, and all that writing advice stuff.
 

mewellsmfu

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The tv show The Americans. Best example I can think of.