Death in literature often serves as a natural focus for conflict, a spark for the plot. (Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Stegner's Crossing to Safety are two fine examples.) However, the sudden death of major characters bothers me, especially if the death seems random, or if the characters have been prominent in a series of books.

One of my favorite novels is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, which tells the story of Inman, a Confederate soldier who deserts his post to walk hundreds of miles across the Carolinas to his home in the Appalachians. Inman eludes death for hundreds of miles, and as a reader you come to expect he will survive the story. Your expectations are dashed, however, when Inman dies within just a few miles of his destination. His sudden death shocked me, and I resented it for a time, but it was not nearly so troublesome as some other literary deaths.

J.K. Rowling has made sort of a habit of killing off main characters lately. She toyed with the idea by killing a minor character in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (And how will they deal with that in the upcoming film, I wonder?) She upped the stakes by killing a more prominent character in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And rumor has it she gets close to the top in the latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I've not yet read).

Over the past year, I've read nearly the entire Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian (of which Master and Commander is the first and most famous book). I just finished the 19th of 20-1/4 books. In this series, minor characters die all the time, and often without warning. A lieutenant will be standing on the quarterdeck and suddenly his head will be smashed by a flying cannonball. But until this most recent book, O'Brian has been kind to his main characters.

In The Hundred Days, however, he kills a main character (my favorite character) "off stage" in the first few pages. The character is suddenly just gone. (Admittedly the character dies in a way that might easily have been predicted, the particular means of death hinted at for the past couple of volumes in the series.) I was outraged! I sent an angry e-mail to Joel bemoaning the loss of one of my literary friends. Then, at the end of the book, O'Brian kills another main character. My world is shattered! I'm almost afraid to read the last book and a quarter. Will he kill Jack Aubrey himself?

Imagine reading a Hardy Boys book in which Chet is suddenly killed when his jalopy plunges from a cliff outside Bayport, or a Nancy Drew book in which Bess dies from food poisoning. How would you feel?

Maybe these sudden deaths are shocking only because I'm not good with death in real life.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — The Problem With Toto   Toto is getting old and even crankier than she used to be.

2003 — 25 for 25   In which Portland's finest restaurants give a Good Deal. In which I rant about the lousy new Portland Monthly magazine. In which I cannot bear a grudge.