Protagonist-Antagonist Dichotomy in Palestinian Children's Literature

Summary, in English

This essay is a study in protagonist-antagonist dichotomy in Palestinian children’s literature depicting encounters between Palestinians and Israelis. The interest in such a study is to evaluate whether the characterization consistently depicts the protagonists and the antagonists and their relation towards each other in a similar manner. If that is the case the literature risks promoting stereotyping and labeling of certain groups of people. A set of eight factors were established in accordance with a Spanish study with the English title Evaluation of the protagonist-antagonist dichotomy in Spanish television content targeting children in order to assess the protagonist-antagonist dichotomy. The factors were: type, age, skills, nationality, relationship between the protagonist and antagonist, portrayal of the characters, means used to achieve objectives and consequences of the action towards the antagonist and vice versa. It was found that in the depiction of the protagonist the characters carried many similar traits but were still depicted with personalities and a sense of humanness. The portrayal of the antagonist characters were on the other hand close to identical and did neither represent personalities nor the complexity of a human being.

• Author: Josefine Burman
• Department/s: Arabic Studies
• Publishing year: 2012
• Language: English
• Full text: Available as PDF - 1 MB; Download statistics
• Document type: Student publication for Bachelor's degree
• Topic: Languages and Literatures
• Keywords: Children’s Literature; Palestinians; Israelis; Protagonist; Antagonist
• Supervisor: Lena Ambjörn (Professor)