Part 6: Resolution with
Redemption
It
doesn’t always have to end badly for villains. Some great stories conclude with
redemption. This doesn’t mean the protagonist doesn’t still have a fight.
Stories without a struggle don’t attract readers or viewers. This is why
redemption usually comes at the very end of the story. The most well-known
example is Darth Vader. Up to the very last moment the audience believes Vader
will kill Luke Skywalker. The outlaw Ben Wade in the movie versions of 3:10 to Yuma is another example of an
action story where a villain finds redemption.
It
doesn’t always have to end badly for villains. Some great stories conclude with
redemption. This doesn’t mean the protagonist doesn’t still have a fight.
Stories without a struggle don’t attract readers or viewers. This is why
redemption usually comes at the very end of the story. The most well-known
example is Darth Vader. Up to the very last moment the audience believes Vader
will kill Luke Skywalker. The outlaw Ben Wade in the movie versions of 3:10 to Yuma is another example of an
action story where a villain finds redemption.
Antagonist
redemption is tricky to pull off because the protagonist needs a bitter foe
right up to the climax of the story. This is why redemption is used more in literary
fiction. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of
the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe is an example of redemption in a
literary work, except it would be more correct to say that Flanders was an
antihero rather than an antagonist. Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is another antihero
who is really a bad guy until he fesses up to his misdeeds. Edmund in
Shakespeare’s King Lear is rotten
almost to the very end. In my mind, these are really stories where the
antagonist has the leading role and the protagonist is the inner self
constantly being pushed down until it finally struggles to the surface to award
redemption to our antihero.