The Right Amount of Death

(I discuss a few different fictions in this blog post, but give no spoilers.)

I remember being very young and stopping at the beginning of the book, thinking, “What’s the point? I know what’s going to happen. The good guy defeats the bad guy. He looks like he’s going to die but he doesn’t. He always wins.” And then I read A Series of Unfortunate Events and added, “Unless this is one of those depressing books that tries to do things differently.”

Well, of course, as I grew I learned that there was more to fiction than just good guys beating bad guys. Sometimes there were no bad guys. Sometimes the main character was the bad guy. Sometimes it was ambiguous as to just who the bad guys were. And sometimes the bad guys turned out to be the good guys. And whilst all these variations were true, the main character still survived, unless he had some heroic death at the end. It was all getting rather stale.

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series changed all that. With no lead protagonist or clearly defined antagonist, this narrative grabbed my attention. But then, many stories have done this, too. It wasn’t too far into the series, however, before I realised that characters were dropping like flies instead of being given tragic, Shakespearian deaths. They were dying pitifully, stupidly and sometimes without having the chance to even salvage their reason for existence other than to portray the cruelties of the world.

Shortly after finishing (what’s currently written of) the series, I thought, well that’s that then, George is a genius. He’s got it right. He’s made human beings squishy sacks of killable meat. (And whilst I’m sure other authors have done this before, this was my first instance of discovering such ruthless storytelling.) He’d done what I’d longed to see in fiction; he made me fear the deaths of my favourite characters. Whenever they got into fights I thought, oh no, this is all too possible, I really do hope they scrape out of this. If they came down with an illness my heart clenched. If they entered hard climates I’d worry about their survival. In short, George R.R Martin reworked the way my mind predicted narrative, and for the better.

But despite all of my praise, A Song of Ice and Fire does not fulfill the right amount of death.

“Well then, Kristian,” I hear you say. “Just what is the right amount of death? Do you want fully fleshed out characters to have their cadavers piled high as Mount Rushmore?” Well actually, I think A Song of Ice and Fire might be the only fiction I’ve read that overdoes the amount of death. Sure, it’s shocking to begin with, but after a while you grow accustomed to it. I won’t spoil anything, but a character died in the last season of Game of Thrones that made me go, “Well that sucks,” as opposed to freaking out as I would have if this had happened earlier. It has become a running joke that if you state your preference for a character then they’ll be promptly killed off, and the series itself is known for its relentless body count, shaping expectations of those that come fresh to it, readers or watchers.

There’s a balance. There was a time when, after reading A Song of Ice and Fire through to in-completion (sorry George), I almost sneered at most other fiction for shying away from death. If a character came to the brink of death and survived, I’d tut. I wouldn’t be annoyed if death clearly didn’t suit the narrative, but whenever it was, for example, implied instead of shown, I’d be left wanting more.

A few days ago I watched a series which changed my perception on the matter. I won’t name it or hint at the series, for that would give away the game to newcomers, but it’s not something you’d expect to have a lot of tragedy in it. In the first few seasons a few deaths were implied, but never outright shown or discussed, or carried impact or significance. This didn’t put me off, per se, but the amount of danger the characters faced at this point led me to think more and more about the likelihood of death and how it just wasn’t happening.

And then they killed my favourite character. Swiftly. Brutally. Realistically. And I didn’t see it coming. And it was perfect.

So the moral here is that there’s a balance. If this character’s death was preceded by a mountain of bodies, I’d have been less affected. I’d have even seen it coming as they charged heroically into the fray. But without prior tragic events occurring, such as the deaths of minor villains and a few less minor ones, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb for shock value. With this perfect balance, that narrative instead allows you to fear for the characters whilst still being caught off-guard when they die. And that’s how you really destroy people’s emotions.