Good vs. Evil: Are there clearly defined roles?

According to me, I feel there are no clearly defined roles for “good” and “evil” characters because there are always twists to stories a person who may seem as a good person may after all be evil towards the climax. Although in fairy tales it is quite easy to find the difference between the protagonist and the antagonist, however, the same cannot be said of most stories. For an example if in a story a character creates trouble, however in the end he may have done everything as a plot to hurt the protagonist.

In most cases the “good” character is usually the one who is caring, loving, kind-hearted, persistent, etc. The protagonist often represents the good and has to go through several hardships throughout the story, but in the end they’re the ones who usually prevail over the antagonist. The protagonist is usually liked by most of the characters throughout the story and is constantly looked as a savior for the rest of society. Whereas the antagonist is portrayed as cunning, evil, scary, etc, the readers usually expect the antagonist to be overcome by the protagonist near the end of the novel. Throughout the early parts of a novel the antagonist seems to have the upper hand and is usually represented as a horrible person because of their deeds. However, as I mentioned before these situations between “good” and “evil” occur usually in fairy tales and in some stories they are hidden from the audience until the climax.

As the stories of the books vary, authors tend to twist stories in order to make the protagonist seem evil and the antagonist good. The judgement of these characters usually comes down to the reader’s perspective. Just because a person does some evil deeds it doesn’t necessarily make them evil and the same can’t be said about people who take part in good deeds. This is because everyone has a little bit of good or evil within them and no character can truly be judged as evil or good. A character that may seem good to you may not be looked at in the same way by a classmate. Therefore a character can’t necessarily be judged as evil or good based on their actions and there is no real way of deciding the roles of good or evil character.