Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Prewitt, Warden

Prewitt is the most obvious choice for a main character—he's the dude who goes through the most intense suffering, who experiences the most, learns the most, and probably changes the most (since, in the end, he changes to being… dead).

He's the one who needs to endure the gauntlet of "The Treatment" and who needs to resist persecution, while defending his own needs. He most closely meets all the classic steps of the hero's journey—getting through complications to attain some new strength.

Warden makes a less persuasive main character, since he's allied with Prewitt's persecutors for most of the movie, but he's still worth mentioning as a pseudo-protagonist. He risks accepting a call to adventure by falling in love with Holmes' wife, and his experiences seem to make him a better person by the time the movie ends: he's kind to Prewitt, and he leads the soldiers in defending themselves from the Japanese air force during the Pearl Harbor attack.