Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

The Leibowitz Abbey

It's hard to pin down a protagonist in A Canticle for Leibowitz. If you read the novel as three individual stories, then you can make the argument for Brother Francis (Fiat Homo), Dom Paulo (Fiat Lux), and Zerchi (Fiat Voluntas Tua) as the protagonists for their respective tales.

But what if we want to focus on a single protagonist for the entire novel? Then we'd go with the Leibowitz Abbey. In each era, the abbey stands against the darker aspects of human civilization—our choice for an antagonist.

Whether human evil is currently taking the form of the war, suffering, or the Simplification, the abbey is always there to fight the good fight. And while the book's three stories may focus on individual members of the abbey, it is the abbey's struggles as an institution that stands at the heart of the novel's conflict.

And even if we disagree with the abbey's reasoning on a given issue, we generally want to see these earnest monks succeed in their goals. That all makes for a pretty solid—if abstract— protagonist.