Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Darker Aspects of Human Civilization

It's hard to do battle with something as abstract as human civilization, don't you think? But if you don't get to choose the ones you love, you surely don't get to choose your antagonists.

Anyway. It's not easy to nail down a singular antagonist in A Canticle. You can make the argument for individual characters in certain sections—Hannegan in Fiat Lux or the Defense Minister in Fiat Voluntas Tua—but these characters aren't important enough or immortal enough to be antagonistic throughout the entire 1200+ year span of the novel.

Instead, we think of the Leibowitz Abbey as contending with the dark side of human civilization: our primitivity, our misuse of political systems, our lust for war and violence, our desire of and fear of truth, our thoughtless proliferation of technology, all of these aspects of humanity make the novel very pessimistic about our future prospects.

They also challenge the goals of those at the Leibowitz Abbey. As a bonus, individual characters like Hannegan display a few, if not all, of these traits in their respective sections.