Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Marsellus, Maynard/Zed, Yolanda/Ringo, Jules/Vincent

The antagonist in any story is all a matter of perspective, so with three different stories each with its own protagonist, every character is someone's antagonist at some point.

Take Butch for instance. He's being pursued by Marsellus and his gang, so of course with Butch as the protagonist in his story Marsellus becomes our antagonist. But who's really the bad guy in this situation? Yes, Marsellus is a gang leader, but it's Butch that breaks his promise to take a dive and double-crosses Marsellus. So from Marsellus' perspective, Butch is the guy who gets in the way of cashing in on the fix.

Once we start getting involved in Butch's story and want him to be able to get his watch, leave town, and not get hunted down by Marsellus, Vincent becomes the antagonist. Butch gets rid of that obstacle pretty quickly.

And let's think about Ringo and Yolanda. Since the first five minutes of the film consists of them talking, it's a fair assumption that they might be protagonists. As it turns out, they're Jules' antagonists—they're an obstacle in the way of his attempts to renounce violence. We're on team Jules because he's the character we're with and we've seen him dealing with his reaction to the "miracle."

But at least there's one thing we can agree on. Maynard and Zed are bad dudes. They're serious obstacles to Butch and Marsellus in just about any way you can think of.