Antagonist?

So, I noticed a new thing. My classmates may be on to something, and I guess it varies reader to reader, I didn’t believe Werner to have antagonistic energy. In comparison to modern media, I had thought the character Werner to be more of a simple, hardworking orphan, just fighting to prove himself in the world. He was also trying to improve his position in the world at the same time, not wanting to end up working in a mineshaft for the rest of his waking days. Werner seemed like an underdog to me, one who would come up later in the novel to fight his way up the nazi chain of power, get a high ranking position, and begin schooling and learning while enlisted. However, later on in the novel, Werner talks about how much he relates to the other children joining Hitler’s army, from the nine-year-old kids who wanted to fight, to the children of ministers who were forced to fight. “For now, though, beneath the whip of the administration, they are all the same, all Jungmänner.” (Doerr 253) He is realizing and noticing his change, his development as a human, and how he does so and how the audience sees the change varies from reader to reader. His actions carry different meanings for every reader. Werner himself sees this change, and it affects him deeply “That his life has been so wholly redirected astounds him.” In that he attempts to distract himself, by “memorizing lyrics or the routes to classrooms, by holding before his eyes a vision of the technical sciences laboratory: nine tables, thirty stools; coils, variable capacitors, amplifiers, batteries, soldering irons locked away in those gleaming cabinets.” (Doerr 254)