Discussion Topic
The protagonist and antagonist in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
Summary:
The protagonist in "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is the young lover who must choose between two doors, and the antagonist is the king who devised the cruel trial. The story centers on the lover's dilemma and the princess's internal conflict, as she decides whether to direct him to the lady or the tiger.
Who are the protagonist and antagonist in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
Protagonist, by defintion, is the one character who the plot is centered upon. In this case, the young male villager serves as our protagonist because all of the story's action is oriented toward his eventual decision. We know he is the protagonist because of his portrayal as "the good guy" by the author.
The antagonist is primarily the semi-barbaric king, who makes the choice to have the young man choose in the arena either the tiger or the maiden. We have no way of knowing whether his alleged love (the princess) is an antagonist or not, as the author leaves us wondering whether the young man chose death or life. The princess gestures toward one door, but whether her love chose that door remains undisclosed. Further, we know that the princess was jealous of the woman behind door number two, which may have prompted her to lead her love to death rather...
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than a lifetime with her adversary.
The young man, the courtier who is in love with the princess, is the protagonist. He is described as a typical hero. He is handsome and honorable, a "young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens." So, he is clearly the "good guy."
The first antagonist is the king. The king's version of justice lacks logic and seems to be more for entertainment purposes than for a genuine practice of justice. The king is "semi-barbaric" and it seems that the "semi-" description implies that one of the doors leads to the tiger and one leads to marriage. Thus, only part of his cruel game leads to death. The king's authority is "irresistible" and he was given to "self-communing." This means that he took no advice from anyone else. He ruled absolutely and according to his own whims. Prisoners sent to the arena were at the mercy of this barbaric king.
If we wanted to speculate further about the ending of the story, we could potentially say that the second antagonist is the princess. The author deliberately leaves the ending ambiguous, leaving the reader to guess as to whether the princess sent her lover to his death or sent him to marry another. Note that she is described as having a "soul as fervent and imperious" as the king's. This supposes that she might send her lover to the tiger's door because she may not be able to stand the thought of her lover being married to another woman.
Who are the characters in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
There are five main characters in Francis Richard Stockton's story "The Lady or the Tiger?" The story is written in the style of a parable or fairy tale, so the characters do not have individual names, but rather are given titles based on their social and narrative roles.
- King: The King is the ruler of a semi-barbaric kingdom, who emulates certain Roman traditions but is still fiercer and less civilized than he might like to appear. He is the father of the Princess and disapproves of the Courtier.
- Courtier: This is a young man from the minor nobility who loves the Princess.
- Princess: She is the daughter of the King and the beloved of the Courtier.
- Lady: This woman has been selected by the King to marry to Courtier if he opens the right door.
- Tiger: This ferocious, man-eating tiger will kill the young man if he opens the wrong door.
The courtier is a young man who is imprisoned because he engaged in an affair with the king's daughter, the princess.
The king is a man who enjoys giving prisoners a choice as to their fate. He has developed a system that has the prisoner choose between two doors-one leads to freedom, the other to an arena and certain death. He takes vicious strides in choosing the tiger for the young man who engaged in an affair with his daughter. The other door has a lovely woman who he must wed should he choose that door.
The lady is the young woman who is behind the other door. She causes the princess much jealousy and anguish.
The princess is in love with the young man. Her red-hot jealousy is causing her to consider letting him go to the arena and be ripped apart by the tiger, rather than living with his marriage to another woman. The choice is never revealed to the reader.
Who is the protagonist in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
In "The Lady or the Tiger?" it is the king who must be considered the protagonist. The story opens with a description of him.
In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric.
It is this semi-barbaric king who conceives the idea of having an arena in which a prisoner must choose between two doors, one releasing a beautiful women who immediately becomes his wife, and the other releasing a tiger that kills and devours him. It was the king who had the arena built. It was the king who sentenced the current prisoner, his daughter's lover, to the arena where the story takes place. None of the events in the story would have occurred if the king had not been initially responsible.
The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king's arena.
Since the king's daughter does not want her lover to be killed, she must be considered the antagonist. However, once her lover is in the arena she has to decide whether she wants him saved or killed by the tiger. In other words, if he were not placed in that situation she would want him to remain alive and to remain her lover. But does she want him marrying another woman, and a woman she hates? Her lover's fate is in her hands.
And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to emerge, all blushing and radiant, should her door be opened, but she knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the accused youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring to one so far above him; and the princess hated her.
The princess's lover trusts her completely. When she makes a "slight, quick movement" toward the right door with her hand, he goes to the door and opens it "without the slightest hesitation." The story ends without the reader being told what happened when he opened the door a long, long time ago. The author writes:
Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?
Most readers have their guesses based on their interpretation of female psychology. But the story has puzzled and frustrated readers ever since it was published in The Century in 1882. Perhaps some English teacher should present an assignment for each student to write an ending to the story. It would be interesting to see how many students would have the handsome lover marry the beautiful lady and how many would have the tiger kill and eat the poor fellow.
The "semi-barbaric king" is arguably the main character in the story, as he's the one responsible for establishing the grim punishment referred to in the title. It was his idea to build a large arena in which suspected criminals would be forced to choose between one of two doors, behind one of which a fearsome tiger would be waiting.
This barbaric custom is observed once more as a handsome suitor to the king's daughter is forced to choose between the two doors. Behind one is the tiger, and behind the other is a lady—a beautiful young woman who admires the courtier. Although it's the suitor's choice and the choice of the princess in directing him that are the main dramatic points in the story, those choices come against the background of the custom instituted by the king.
Although the princess's dilemma in whether to allow her lover to be taken by a tiger or another woman leaves the audience with an intriguing cliffhanger, that dilemma only arises because of the king's actions. In this land, the king is a dominating tyrant; ultimately everything that happens in this society somehow relates to him. And it's no different in relation to the action of "The Lady, or the Tiger?" He is the brooding background presence of all the events as they unfold, even if the main focus is on the courtier or the princess.
Describe the main character in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
The main character in "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is undoubtedly the princess. While it is the king who establishes this form of justice and sentences the courtier to the justice of the arena, it is only because of the princess that we have this story. She, too, is semi-barbaric and loves with that kind of love. She is willing to flaunt her father's wishes--twice--both to have an affair with her lover and to find out the secret of the door. To do that, which no one had ever done before, she demonstrated perseverance and persistence. The key to the princess's character, though, is found in her indecision about the door. For most of us, this would have been an easy choice--alive is always better than dead. Instead, this is an agonizing decision. She is as unwilling to have her lover marry someone else as she is to see him violently devoured by a tiger. This indecision is the manifestation of her semibarbaric nature. That she even thinks twice about this is most indicative of her character.