A major factor in crafting a protagonist is their connection to the culture or world in which the story takes place – whether they are an insider or an outsider. A protagonist’s internal struggle often depends on their relationship with their setting and the way in which they subvert the structures that define it.
For example, the hero of the second Earthsea novel, The Tombs of Atuan, is an insider in terms of his upper-class family’s position and educational background. However, he is an outsider in terms of his headstrong refusal to accept the necessity of caution and humility in any exercise of power. Conversely, the hero of Star Wars The Force Awakens, Finn, is an outsider who joins the Resistance to fight against his former employers in the First Order.
An insider’s struggle is often a struggle to balance their inside knowledge with their outside perspective. This is often conveyed in a first person narrative, where the protagonist experiences the world but doesn’t feel compelled to explain every cultural tidbit or detail to their readers. This approach is particularly common in literary works, where characters rely on the reader to fill in gaps that are obvious and natural to them.
Al Pacino stars in The Insider, a movie about a whistleblower who is a key witness against the tobacco industry. The film was made in Louisville, Kentucky, using the historic Seelbach Hotel as the site of the Brown & Williamson offices and local bank buildings for other scenes. It has been criticized for playing to the audience’s ignorance of journalism, with some criticizing it as a form of “tortious interference.” But it harks back to an era when grown-up films calling truth to power regularly drew crowds and plaudits.