Rejecting the Challenge: The Passive Protagonist in life and fiction

The second step of the Hero’s Journey is “Rejection of the Challenge”. This is usually due to fear, and is not unreasonable. In a story we often choose a moment in which people are faced with a problem which has no solution without massive change. I often mention “Ordinary People”, where a passive protagonist (Donald Sutherland) comes to realize that his wife (Mary Tyler Moore) hates his son. He then must make a decision: to save his son? Or save his marriage? No matter what he chooses, there is going to be an ugly problem.

The challenge was to act. He refuses to act for ninety minutes of movie, during which the story is carried by a sub-plot.

If he saves his son, he loses his marriage. If he saves his marriage, he loses his son.

An almost perfect dilemma. I’ve seen some posts recently about the value of passive protagonists and in the right hands, they can indeed be a powerful tool. Why? Because in our own lives, we can be faced with problems that have no answer that returns us to the starting point. We must CHANGE, and change is frightening, and difficult. The most extreme changes can feel like death — they will shatter the ego. Hold powerful enough philosophical or political positions, love hard enough, hope hard enough, and admitting we were wrong can actually be HARDER than dying. In that sense, as with comedy, dying is easy, reality is hard.