Any character who begins at an extreme or is driven to it is ripe for a process of polarity reversal.
12. Polarity Seeks Resolution
Sometimes the two big ideas or life-ways that have been polarized throughout a story will seek resolution by converting into something else, a third way that resolves the contradiction between the two elements.
The classic Western Red River shows two ways of living sharply polarized in the form of the older and younger men played by John Wayne (Tom Dunson) and Montgomery Clift (Matthew Garth). Dunson is brave but bull-headed, masculinity taken to its most macho extreme, while Garth's softer style is radically different, merciful where Dunson is ruthless. It is an almost Biblical polarity, like the difference between the wrathful, jealous Old Testament God and the gentle, compassionate Son of God depicted in the New Testament. Their struggle turns deadly, with Dunson swearing he will hunt down and kill Garth, who has been like a son to him. They fight at the climax and it looks like the polarity can only be resolved by the death of one party or the other, but this tragic fate is avoided by the intervention of pure female energy. The young woman played by Joanne Dru (Tess Millay) breaks up the fight with a gunshot and reminds the men that "anyone can see you two love each other." The men realize she's right and stop fighting. Dunson declares he'll change his cattle brand to reflect his acceptance of Garth, and the polarity is resolved. The two opposing styles of living are resolved into a third way, one that balances Dunson's extreme masculinity with feminine emotion and compassion. It makes dramatic sense, for it was Dunson's rejection of the feminine side in the early part of the film that set the whole plot in motion, when Dunson refused to take his lady love along with him on his journey to Texas.
We could say the protagonist's point of view or style of living is the thesis of the story. The anti-thesis is the antagonist's opposing viewpoint and style. The synthesis is whatever resolves the polarized conflict at the end. It may be a restatement of the protagonist's wishes or world-view, incorporating new learning or strength gained from the clash with the antagonist. It may be a radical new approach to life that the hero finds, or it may be a return to the hero's original position, but even then it will always be shifted a little by the polarized struggle the hero has been through. Typically heroes learn something from their polar opposites and incorporate this into their new pattern of behavior.
The resolution of some polarized stories could be the realization that the polarization itself was false, based on a misunderstanding, or that it was totally unnecessary if the seemingly opposed parties had simply communicated better in the beginning. Polarized romantic comedies can be built entirely around misunderstandings to show the difficulty of male-female communication, but might end with the lovers realizing they had been saying the same thing all along.
13. Polarized Universes
Polarity is a meta-pattern, a system that operates at all levels in stories, from large-scale clashes of cultures to intimate human relationships, all the way down to polarities within individuals. On the big scale a story can show a polarized clash between two cultures, generations, world-views, or philosophies of life. Ancient myths were polarized by eternal struggles between gods and giants or between primordial elements like fire and ice. Most Westerns put the hero into a town or a situation that is sharply polarized between pairs of opposing forces: Indians vs. the cavalry, cattle barons vs. immigrant farmers, ex-Confederates vs. ex-Yankees, etc. Film noir and the genre of "cops-and-robbers" split the world into polarized levels, the sun-lit upper world of law-abiding society and the shadowed Underworld of the criminals. The movie Titanic is polarized between the worlds of upper and lower decks, representing the classes of society and the conflict between desire for control and desire for freedom. The Terminator and Matrix movies are polarized between humans and machines, the Star Wars movies between dark and light sides of the Force. Platoon is polarized by a young soldier's choice between brutal and humane ways of going through a war, represented by two older men with contrasting approaches to survival.
14. Inner Polarity
A story can be built around the polarities that sometimes exist within a person, as explored in stories and movies like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Fight Club. Psycho shows us a man who has internalized the feminine side of his dead mother, and half the time speaks in her voice. Stories like these externalize and make visible the usually unseen dualities of personality.
There is no better dramatization of a polarized inner struggle than the chilling scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where Gollum alternates between the good and evil sides of his own personality. The good side is what remains of his original identity as an innocent hobbit, Smeagol, and it resists temptation heroically, remembering the kindness and humanity shown by his master, Frodo. But eventually the wheedling, crafty, evil side that has degenerated into Gollum triumphs with fierce hate and jealousy, reversing the power balance within the character. The polarity of the character had been aligned towards hope for Gollum's salvation; now it is aligned to the certainty that he will betray the hobbits in his greed to have the Ring. Polarity was used here to show an inner struggle in a divided self.
15. Agon
Around the globe, people have imagined the creation of the world as a polarized situation. God divides light from darkness and the heavens from the earth. Primordial gods wrestled monsters of chaos in the earliest stories of creation, and the earliest dramas were religious rituals re-enacting these polarized struggles. In the ancient world, where abstract qualities such as luck, love, war, and victory were personified, humanized, and worshipped as gods, the potent force of polarity was recognized in the person of the Greek god Agon, the force of struggle and conflict, ruling over athletic events and contests of all kinds, even legal disputes, for agon also means a judgment. In an athletic event or a courtroom, a judgment is being made about who is the best or who is right.
Agon was pictured as a young athlete carrying a pair of jumping weights called "halteres" in his hands. The weights gave the jumper an extra boost on long jumps and may have been a symbol of some quality associated with Agon, perhaps an extra edge he gave to the athlete who prayed and offered sacrifice to him. There was an altar of sacrifice dedicated to Agon at Olympia, where the Olympic games were held. Not much is known about Agon or his "backstory" but he may have been part of a family of Zeus s children who were responsible for other qualities that had roles to play in the lives of athletes, such as speed, victory, competitive spirit, and even chaos.
The spirit of Agon is imbedded in the polarized terms "protagonist" and "antagonist". We cheer for the protagonist in the struggle or contest, and we wish for the defeat of the antagonist.
The English word "agony" derives from agon and signifies that the process of struggle is sometimes painful and arduous. The word is sometimes used as one pole of a polarized expression, as in the title The Agony and the Ecstasy or the phrase from TV coverage of the Olympic Games, "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." These phrases describe the dramatic emotional extremes that a polarized agon can generate. To antagonize someone is to create an agon or conflict with that person where none existed before.
AGON: THE ARGUMENT OF THE PLAY