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I can see that someone got mad or someone made someone else mad. The things
that make it difficult are `に` and the `られる` form of `怒る`. What does this
mean? How do you figure out who did what in these types of sentences?
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2011-07-06T17:24:01.207
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grammar meaning
Who scolded whom in Aに怒られる?
Maybe the fact that `に` is used in both active and passive sentences with `怒る`
is making it difficult for you. `に` can be used either as a dative case marker
or as an element leading the agentive-phrase in passive. In English, you can
see that the dative is `to`, whereas the agentive-phrase is headed by `by`, so
an active sentence with dative case and its passive counterpart look pretty
much different:

> A gave a present to B (`to` as dative case)
>
> B was given a present by A (`by` heading an agentive phrase in passive)

But in Japanese, they are both expressed as `に`. So an active sentence with
dative case and its passive counterpart may look confusing:

> AがBに怒った (`に` as dative case)
>
> BがAに怒られた (`に` heading an agentive phrase in passive)

The two examples above describe (roughly) the same event; in both sentences, A
is who scolded, and B is who was scolded. But in the first sentence, it is B
that appears with `に`, and in the second sentence, it is A. I think that was
where you were confused. But you should be able to distinguish the two
sentences by looking at whether the verb is in active or passive form. If you
see that it is in active form `怒る`, then the phrase that comes with `に` is
**the one who is being scolded**. If it is in passive form `怒られる`, then the
phrase that comes with `に` is **the one who is scolding**.

* * *

**Advanced part**

Language hacker raised an interesting point in the comment, so I will add
something. You can also see the difference between the two usages of `に` when
you topicalize the relevant phrase. The dative `に` becomes optional in front
of `は`, but the agentive `に` is obligatory:

> Aは、Bには怒ったが、Cには怒らなかった (dative case `に` preceding `は`)
>
> Aは、Bは怒ったが、Cは怒らなかった (dative case `に` omitted before `は`)
>
> Bは、Aには怒られたが、Dには怒られなかった (agentive `に` preceding `は`)
>
> * Bは、Aは怒られたが、Dは怒られなかった (Ungrammatical to omit agentive `に` preceding `は`)
>
> (* indicates ungrammatical sentence.)
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It may first bear mentioning that 怒られる is usually used specifically to mean
"got scolded by", rather than "to became the focus of someone's anger".

This may make it easier to understand.

  * Aは怒った : A got angry 
  * AはBに怒った : A got angry at B (in this usage, B is usually not a person, but rather an event or state of affairs). 
  * AはBを怒った : A scolded B (B is a person) 
  * BはAに怒られた : B got scolded by A.
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2011-07-06T18:17:18.963
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This is one of those cases where the Japanese られる doesn't quite line up nicely
with the English passive:

> Aが怒った。 A got mad.
>
> （私が）A **に** 怒られた。 (I) was gotten mad at **by** A. (More naturally in the
> active: A got mad at me.)
>
> 雨が降った。 The rain fell.
>
> （私が）雨 **に** 降られた。 (I) was fallen on **by** the rain. (More naturally: I got
> rained on.)

With the passive られる, the subject of the sentence (usually 私 if it's omitted)
is the "target" (on the receiving end) of the action. In other words,
something is done _to_ the subject rather than _by_ the subject. (The _by_
part is marked by に, as sawa mentioned.)

To address your comment about the たい construction, then:

> 彼女に怒られたい I want to be gotten mad at by her. (More naturally in the active: I
> want her to get mad at me.)

Also, when に is used not with 怒られる, but with 怒る, it marks the cause of anger:

> 環境破壊 **に** 怒る become angry **over** destruction of the environment
>
> 入場できないこと **に** 怒る become angry **over** not being able to enter
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_**Note:** Edited after some consultation with native speakers._

I feel your pain. These used to confuse the heck out of me for a long time, so
I know where you are coming from.

I'm assuming you are in a situation where you're reading something, and
context can be spread out over pages. You find a sentence fragment like
「ボブに怒られた」 and you're wondering if someone is angry at Bob, or Bob is angry at
someone. The subject was maybe established three pages ago, and you could
maybe go back and check, but you want to be able to keep trucking like a
native speaker would, sure in your knowledge of which way the action is
flowing.

First, for the purpose of sorting this out, think of に in terms of being a
pointer. It says that something is going toward the thing that it is connected
to. Anger doesn't really move around like a ball, but just imagine it does.

So we have two cases:

> ボブに怒った。
>
> ボブに怒られた。

Both sentences have "Bob" and "anger" in them, but, if your confusion is like
mine was, you're not sure which of them means Bob is angry, and which means
someone is angry at Bob. Or, at least, how to reliably and systematically
determine the difference.

In both cases, に points _at_ Bob, so to figure out who is angry, we need to be
more precise about what _exactly_ is coming _at_ him. There's a ball of anger
coming at him, the type of ball is different because of the different verb
form.

In the first case, ボブに怒った, it's just plain anger coming at Bob. The anger ball
is being thrown at his head by someone. He just receives someone's anger.
Thus, someone is angry at him.

In the second case, ボブに怒られた, what is coming at Bob is the _potential to be
angry_. He is being _endowed_ with anger. This time, because of the verb form,
the anger ball is absorbed into Bob, so this time it's Bob that is angry.
Something or someone _made_ him angry.

You can at this point, be sure about the direction of the action, without
being thrown by the use of に. However, there is more to the story.

You could also translate ボブに怒られた as "Bob scolded [someone]". It's a fragment,
so we don't know who Bob is angry at, but the thing is, Bob has been endowed
with anger, and anger as a concept is usually directed at someone or
something. So Bob is angry, most likely, at the person who threw the anger
ball at him. He has still been endowed with anger, so it's still okay to think
of it as "Bob was made angry". It's just that the focus is on Bob, and and his
anger is probably going somewhere now that he has it.

What if you want to put the focus on the person who made Bob angry? Then you
could do this:

> ボブに怒らせた

This also says "Bob was made angry" or "Bob scolded [someone]" but because of
the ~らせる form, the emphasis is on the fact that _someone_ (or something) made
Bob angry.

Let's say Taro made Bob angry. If we say 太郎がボブに怒らせた, we are saying that Taro
is definitely responsible for Bob's anger, even though Taro might not have
done anything deliberately. The point is that focus is on Taro's action.

If we say 太郎がボブに怒られた, we're saying Bob got angry at Taro, even though Taro
might not have done a thing to deserve it. The focus is on Bob's reaction.

In short, the point is that に always directs action onto something. But when
you use られる, or らせる, you are directing an endowment onto the target. The
target then takes on that quality instead of just receiving it.

Hope that helps.
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What none of the other answers pointed out is that the `rare` passive
construction in Japanese actually has two distinct usages, one of which is
only tangentially related to English passives but usually clamped together
under that terminology when taught. I was originally taught it as the
"sufferer passive" (which sounds better in my native language), I've seen it
in Japanese as 迷惑の受け身 and one linguistics presentation I've been to called it
an Affected Experiencer Construction. Sometimes, a sentence is ambiguous
syntactically between the two usages, sometimes it is not.

Unlike regular passives, which take a transitive verb and move the object so
it becomes the subject, the 迷惑の受け身 also works with intransitives and can make
sentence patterns you wouldn't find with regular passives even when working
with transitives. In general, the constuction means that something was done,
and someone was affected by experiencing that action - almost always
negatively. That `雨に降られた` example Derek's answer is exactly this construction,
but here are some more examples:

> （母は）赤ちゃんに泣かれた。 The baby cried, and that troubled his mother.
>
> パパに死なれた。 Dad died, and that upsets me (a very self-centered thing to say!)
>
> 誰かに足を踏まれた。 Someone stepped on my foot, and I don't like that. Note that 足
> gets the object particle even though it would have been the subject if this
> was a normal passive.
>
> 太郎が花子に花瓶を壊された。 Hanako broke Taro's vase, and that upset him. Again, 花瓶 is
> not treated as it would have been in a normal passive sentence. Made even
> more complicated by something like:
>
> 太郎が花子に次郎の花瓶を壊された。 Hanako broke Jiro's vase, and that didn't please Taro
> (maybe because he would be blamed for breaking it, or for any other
> contextually available reason)

(To give credit, the last two sentences are derived from that linguistics
presentation I mentioned)

What does all that have to do with 怒られた? I think it can be interpreted as an
example of this pattern in addition to the classic passive. Someone was mad
and I was in trouble because of that (hence, he was mad at me). In addition,
since 怒る is listed in my dictionary as an intransitive verb, this syntactic
interpretation makes even more sense to me.
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