Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Guido

The protagonist is the main character of a story. He or she is the person we root for or whose story we are most invested in. Care to take a guess who this is in Life Is Beautiful?

We'd play the Jeopardy! think tune for you, but we're pretty sure we won't get past a few bars. It's Guido. That's like a $100 intro-to-the-category question right there.

The next logical question is, why do we root for Guido? We see two main reasons. First, the man's personality is infectiously uplifting. Just look at the loveable goof. He's always smiling and enjoying himself, and he finds the joy in life wherever he goes. How could you not root for this guy?

Second, his goals are something we can get behind. In the first half of the film, he wants Dora to fall in love with him, and we're all for that. Dora's current beau, Rodolfo, is just the worst. In the second half of the film, he wants to protect his son from the dangers and trauma of the camp.

Is there a more admirable goal than that? We don't think so.