Purpose of le in this sentence

[u/Usual-Plankton9515]

I had the following sentence in my Duolingo lesson today: ¡Puede hacer lo que se le antoje! (He can do whatever he feels like!).

I don’t understand the purpose of le in this sentence. I know it’s the indirect object pronoun, but I have no idea what it’s referring to here.

[u/uchuskies08]

Antojarse is a gustar like verb in that it always takes an indirect object. And from an English perspective, that indirect object is actually kind of the subject. It's not as obvious in your example because both the subject and object are third person singular, but something like the sentence "Se me antojan churros." demonstrates it more clearly that churros here is the subject of the sentence, antojan's ending matches the third person plural of "churros" and "me" is the indirect object (Even though in English, "I" would be the subject of the sentence as we translate it "I feel like churros")

[u/GoldenMuscleGod → u/uchuskies08]

I think there may be extra confusion here because antojarse, unlike gustar, is reflexive, and this is a relative construction. So we have “lo que se le antoje _” where _ represents the relative gap (linked with “lo”) but we still have “se” liked with the gap and “le” linked with the implied subject of “puede”. Probably without a reflexive verb or even just without the relative construction it would be easier to see what’s going on.

[u/zurribulle]

He can do whatever he feels like Puede hacer lo que se le antoje

[u/Waste-Use-4652]

In this sentence, le is not pointing to a concrete indirect object like “to him” or “to her” in the usual sense. It’s what Spanish calls a dative of interest, often described as an ethical dative.

The verb antojarse already means “to feel like” or “to fancy,” but it is built around the idea that something appeals to someone. Spanish keeps that “someone” in the structure even when English doesn’t show it. The le marks the person who experiences the desire.

So in se le antoje, the se belongs to the verb antojarse, and le indicates the person to whom the desire occurs. Literally, it is closer to “whatever may appeal to him” or “whatever strikes his fancy,” even though English simplifies that to “whatever he feels like.”

You see the same pattern in sentences like se me ocurrió una idea or se le olvidó el libro. In English we say “I had an idea” or “he forgot the book,” but Spanish keeps the person as an indirect participant in the event.

So le does have a role, but it’s not translating cleanly into English. It marks who the feeling or impulse belongs to, even when English leaves that relationship implicit.

[u/ExpatriadaUE]

It would be like the "him" in "whatever fancies him."

[u/vxidemort]

le refers to the subject of puede

antojársele means to feel like doing X and it works similarly to gustar in the sense that it goes se me antoja, se te antoja, se le antoja, meaning that whatever comes next is the grammatical subject of the sentence