: Have you looked into Kafka's work, espcially Metamorphosis and The Trial? I think there's an adjective for what you try to achieve, and it's "kafkaesque". Apart from that, I'm not sure how

@Megan928

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Have you looked into Kafka's work, espcially Metamorphosis and The Trial? I think there's an adjective for what you try to achieve, and it's "kafkaesque".

Apart from that, I'm not sure how satisfying a story could be without a clearly defined antagonistic force (or one that is so well hidden it is hard to point a finger at it). As you point out yourself, stories are driven by conflict. The antagonist is the embodyment of the mechanism, force, literal person that tries to keep the protagonist from reaching its goal. If the reader doesn't know the antagonist -- I don't think the protagonist needs to know it(1) --, he will have a lot of trouble following the story. The best example I can think of is Chris Nolan's movie Inception: Cobb has a clear goal almost from the start of the movie. His antagonist are the "projections" of Fisher's mind -- subconscious defensive systems that try to keep intruders out of Fisher's head. When they sense that something is messing with Fisher's thoughts, they attack. While this is a great antagonist and makes a lot of sense in the framework of Inception, I didn't get it when I first saw the movie. The result was this: I saw a lot of battling and a lot of opposition to Cobb's goal, but I didn't get where that was coming from. I was confused. I enjoyed the movie enough to watch it again and get the whole concept of projections, but when I left the cinema, I was kind of dissatisfied. I wouldn't be surprised if there's people out there, who put Kafka's Trial down for the exact same reason. Not having an antagonist that the reader can understand and pin down leaves us confused. We might be aware of what the story is about, but we don't understand why the protagonist can't reach his goals. At some point, we get frustrated -- and might even stop reading.

t;dr: While it's not necessary that the protaganist is aware of the antagonist force, the reader should know it, even if it's abstract. Otherwise, s/he might have difficulties following the plot.

P.S.: Another thought: What if Fate is the antagonistic force? Fate is so abstract we can hardly grasp it. Yet, an entire school of Greek dramatists did nothing but write dramas about how Fate is inevitable.

P.2.S.: Concerning fantasy and horror: Yes, horror, for me, too, works best if I don't know what's going on. (Think of Stranger Things. At sime point, the Demogorgon just stopped being scary, because it was so unrealistic, and at that point, the whole series lost its appeal to me.) However, if I still don't get it at the end of the movie, I might have been scared like never before in my life, but I won't take any satisfaction from the experience. Rather, I'd be pretty grumpy, because I have suffered for no apparent reason (and probably won't be able to sleep for a week because I can't figure out why all the horror happened, and could it happen to me?). While this happens in real life, I don't think this is what we expect from storytelling. When I read a book or watch a movie, I want to take some emotional message from it, such as: Growing up is messy. Some marriages can't be fixed. Dropping out of college is not the end of the world. Family supports you, even if you're not a beauty queen. If I don't get this message, I might have been entertained (or scared), but the story probably won't stay with me. (Yes, I'm aware that's personal taste.)

(1) Example: A coming of age story. The story goal is for the antagonist to grow up. For the protagonist, it is very unlikely that s/he will ever be consciosuly aware of an antagonist, because s/he doesn't set out to "grow up". Nobody does. It's something that happens to you, and usually you don't even know what being "grown up" means until you realize that you're part of a social structure and cannot continue to live an insular life. The reader, on the other hand, is very aware of the antagonistic force -- say, selfishness and unawareness of others, innocence maybe, however you define that or "childhood" in general, as opposed to being "grown up".

A beautiful example is Hirokazu Kore-Eda's movie I wish (Kiseki) that reminded me a lot of the Stephen King adaption Stand by me. It centers on Koichi, a 12-year-old that wants to reunite his broken-up family. When he hears that two bullet trains passing each other at full speed for the first time grant a wish to the person who sees it, he sets out with a few friends to watch this magical moment. His wish is: Let the volcano Sakurajima next to my new village errupt really badly so that nobody can live there anymore. Then, he thinks, his mother will go back to his father in Osaka and he can be with his entire family again. It's a very selfish wish but something that a child is apt to do. Maybe you can guess how the movie ends. (It's really evident from the beginning, but still so beautiful to watch.) -- So, in Kiseki, what's the antagonist? Sure, Koichi encounters trouble: He loses faith, his younger brother is not really on board with his plan, he doesn't have the money to buy train tickets, the kids don't know where to spend the night. That's all problems, but not really the antagonist. The antagonist is Koichi's wish that cannot be granted, not even by a mircale. He suffers from his longing for his reunited family and must accept that his life has changed. Once he has achieved that, the movie is over. BUT: Koichi doesn't know that. And yet, the movie works -- because the audience knows the source of the conflict.

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