Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Bernardo

We don't like this lay the antagonist role on Bernardo— he's definitely a very sympathetic antagonist— but the fact remains that he kills Riff, which is the first fatality in the film and which sends the whole chain of events down a very dark road. That murder is the obstacle to Tony and Maria's future, the act that leads to the end of their possibilities. It's a tough hand fate has dealt him. We feel for the guy, we do. But he's the guy tagged for a villain, and sometimes he even seems to want it.

Really, the antagonist here is the society these kids all live in. As Maria says, "It's not us, it's everything around us."