Use a Foil to Make Your Protagonist Look Better — Or Worse

Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash

Have you ever watched a police drama where the detective solves a crime in each episode? Most likely, you have. If that detective catches a different thief in one episode after another, you begin to develop a certain respect for the detective’s ability to study clues at the crime scene, to know the value of the stolen item, to determine the motive of the thief, and to anticipate the thief’s intended use for the stolen goods. By the end of each episode, of course, the detective finds the missing item, returns it to its rightful owner, and makes sure that the thief is punished.

What happens, however, to your view of the detective if the bad guy turns out to be not only a thief but also a cold-blooded murderer, a criminal who kills innocent victims who possess the valuable item or simply get in the thief’s way as he attempts the heist? Does that additional crime change your view of the thief and the detective? Of course. You begin to view the criminal in a more negative light, and if the detective puts that more notorious criminal behind bars, you view the detective in a more positive light. These characters essentially serve as foils to one another, making each other look better or worse by comparison.

According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman in A Handbook to Literature, a foil is “literally a ‘leaf’ of bright metal…