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Aladdin and the sorceror, in the story Aladdin. The tale starts by following the sorceror as he seeks a magic lamp, but Aladdin is later revealed as the story's protagonist.
In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions, that constructs a character who the audience assumes is the protagonist but is later revealed not to be.
A false protagonist is presented at the start of the fictional work as the main character, but then is eradicated, often by killing them (usually for shock value or as a plot twist) or changed in terms of their role in the story (i.e. making them a lesser character, a character who leaves the story, or revealing them to actually be the antagonist).[1]
^Christopher W. Tindale (2007). Fallacies and Argument Appraisal. Cambridge University Press. pp. 28–33. ISBN 978-0-521-84208-2.
In fiction, a falseprotagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions...
own antagonist). Sometimes, a work will have a falseprotagonist, who may seem to be the protagonist, but then may disappear unexpectedly. The character...
Limbo concept. A red herring can also be used as a form of false foreshadowing. A falseprotagonist is a character presented at the start of the story as the...
narrative, after the protagonist and before the tritagonist. The deuteragonist often acts as a constant companion to the protagonist or someone who continues...
acclaimed TV shows. Literature portal Anti-fairy tale Anti-novel Falseprotagonist List of fictional antiheroes "Anti-Hero". Lexico. Oxford University...
villains. North by Northwest's MacGuffin is nothing that motivates the protagonist; Roger Thornhill's objective is to extricate himself from the predicament...
classic example is the double false awakening of the protagonist in Gogol's Portrait (1835). Studies have shown that false awakening is closely related...
logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction...
colonialism John Bunyan – The Pilgrim's Progress: The journey of the protagonists Christian and Evangelist symbolises the ascension of the soul from earth...
such as The Thin Red Line (1998), also begin in medias res, with the protagonists already actively in combat and no prior domestic scenes leading up to...
— Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche argued that the deus ex machina creates a false sense of consolation that ought not to be sought in phenomena. His denigration...
evident. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or the...
a fear of the outside world. In the film What Happened to Monday the protagonists (identical septuplet sisters) risk their lives by taking turns onto the...
originally released in 1984 of the same name. Cassidy portrays the falseprotagonist Kris Fowles; a high school student who becomes a victim to Freddy...
active protagonist with "the culturally approved traits of beauty, sacrifice, and self-effacement".: 100–101 In fan-fiction versions, the protagonist traditionally...
character in a story who is presented as the main enemy and rival of the protagonist. The English word antagonist comes from the Greek ἀνταγωνιστής – antagonistēs...
Satire is sometimes a prominent element. The behavior of a picaresque protagonist stops just short of criminality. Carefree or immoral rascality positions...
the main enemy of someone. In fiction, it is a character who is the protagonist's, commonly a hero's, most prominent and most-known enemy. The word archenemy...
good actions and, thereby, measures and depicts the well-being of its protagonist. But in his formal definition, as well as throughout the Poetics, Aristotle...
that fall into the wrong hands, faked letters, or letters withheld by protagonists. The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in...
in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists such as Adeline in The Romance of the Forest learn that their superstitious...
these stories are a tale of boiled missionaries; of a lady who borrows a false eye, a peg leg, and the wig of a coffin-salesman's wife; and a final tale...
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