Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Pyro addicts

These nameless face-painters are problems: they're addicted to some crazy pyro drug that makes them want to start fires, and they're always burning stuff down or robbing people or otherwise causing trouble. They're not all that important in the book as individuals (we never get any of their names)—they're just these negative forces that show up to attack Robledo, destroy it, and then cause gun-battles and other disasters around Lauren while she's trying to migrate north. That makes them antagonists: they're villains fighting the protagonist.

Yeah, usually there's a more singular, definitive antagonist to deal with, but in Parable of the Sower, it's just these folks. They pretty much represent society's decay, so if you want to think of the antagonist as all the forces making the United States go down the drain, you can think of the antagonist that way, too.