Dr. Ric asks:
A reader of an article of mine called my attention to what may be my (perhaps) misuse of the word "antagonist."
Here is what I wrote: "I can just imagine some strange movie in which the "bad guys" (or the antagonist) take the "good guy" (the protagonist) and tie him to a chair."
The reader then wrote: Shouldn't that be the "bad guys" (or the antagonists)?
To which I replied:
Blessings to you, and I will do my research to see if the word "antagonist" can be used as a collective noun as I used it (without checking first, I might add).
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So, can it be as I had it originally, as a collective noun, or should it be as the reader suggests?
What an interesting question! The answers will take us back to the ancient Greeks and the Old Testament.
Greek drama started as a kind of monologue by the "protagonist," with comments by the chorus. "Protagonist" literally means "first struggler" (proto=first, agon=struggle). Some avant-garde dramatist with a big budget then added an "antagonist" (the "struggler against"). This led inevitably to modern movies with their casts of thousands and budgets of billions.
We still use "protagonist" to mean the hero or central figure of a story (dramatic or otherwise). Some people misuse it to mean "proponent" or "advocate." And of course the villain of the story is the antagonist—a singular noun. If the protagonist faces several enemies, then they're antagonists.
But another word for antagonist is "adversary," and here perhaps Dr. Ric (who is the president of an evangelical seminary) may be able to confirm my belief that some translations of the Bible use "adversary" as a term for the Devil—especially in the Book of Job.
"Adversary," like "enemy," can be used as singular or plural, at least in the sense of treating a group of enemies as a single unit: "The enemy is in range of our guns" doesn't mean one poor unlucky soldier, but a sizable number of soldiers. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union regarded each other as "the adversary," and again the singular usage really meant a plural.
In the example Dr. Ric gives, "antagonists" would be the preferable usage. But with some rewriting, he might have said: "I can imagine some strange movie in which the good guy (the protagonist) faces an adversary (antagonists) prepared to tie him into a chair."
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