Foiled Again: A Look at Character Contrasts

Imagine your story’s protagonist is a standup guy or gal. The main character, the one who stirs the cocktail. But you find that the protagonist is missing something, and getting plot points out there seems awkward. Her character is a bit flat.

Could be, she needs a foil.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “foil,” when used in the writerly, literary sense, as “someone or something that serves as a contrast to another.” Simple and straightforward, that. Think Lou Costello to Bud Abbott. But things are never quite so simple.

In literary terms, a foil is usually a character that plays off the main character. Think of the classic example of Doctor John Watson, inestimable sidekick and stalwart friend of Sherlock Holmes. Watson serves several roles. He’s the narrator and chronicler of media-shy Holmes, sure, but most importantly he’s a polar opposite to the great detective in personality. The contrasts between this odd couple accentuate the gifts and eccentricities of Holmes.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Snowball and Napoleon are ostensibly on the same side in the overthrow of human barnyard domination, yet their diverging philosophies soon make that difference the real story. Snowball wants to build a fair, equitable society. Napoleon wants to control.

Napoleon and Snowball are pigs, to be sure, but anthropomorphic ones. There’s no reason you can’t write a realistic animal companion as a foil to a human, or even vice versa.

Depending on who you talk to, the foil might also be an antagonist. Now many scholars of comparative literature disagree on that, and they’re the experts, not me. Some insist that a foil must be on the side of the protagonist, while others dispute that, and many have been known to blow a gasket over the argument. My reasoned response is, so what? The effect is the same if an antagonist provides that magical moment for the protagonist, that moment when character traits come sharpest into focus.

In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Jean Valjean struggles mightily through a hard life, one challenge after another thrown at him. Stoic, selfless, determined, and an adherent to what is right, he struggles for us all. He’s not a saint; his struggles are often internal and he sometimes suppresses a bent toward selfishness. But what really illuminates this in Valjean is his nemesis, the relentless Inspector Javert.

Javert is the antithesis of Valjean. Not a bad sort, even. He’s just been trained to be an unbending enforcer of the law, whereas Valjean, with his criminal past and life of deception, epitomizes shades of gray in a person. Javert cannot abide this, and this dichotomy lies at the soul of the novel.

If tossing in a foil to strengthen and round out a main character seems gimmicky, rest assured that it’s not. It’s a story strategy with the meatiest of traditions. Shakespeare masterfully created foils for his main characters, as in Romeo and Juliet. The nurse’s pragmatism provides a perfect foil to Juliet’s starry-eyed innocence. Mercutio, the cynical, snarky extrovert, is the perfect foil to Romeo, the sensitive introvert.

So think about the construction of your secondary characters. It’s likely you’ll have multiple characters in most stories; contrasting one or two against your protagonist might yield narrative gold, enriching the character and story you really want to give us.