Death. Just the simple word holds so much weight. The
permanent end, the ultimate stop as far as the average human perception is
concerned. It’s upsetting, saddening, tragic… Made worse the closer we are to
the one who as passed away.
Death
demands attention. So much attention that we even have whole ceremonies
centered around the person who might not even be able to appreciate it anymore.
It has to be respected, either by standing completely quiet for a few minutes,
dressing in black for a month, or in some cases even celebrated with singing.
Even if death is made mundane, like during war time, we are still shocked to
how not-shocking it becomes.
So,
considering this, why are newer authors treating the death of a character’s
friend so casually lately?!
It might be
a bit early to go out on a rampage, considering this rant is based on only two
books I’ve read. Nevertheless, I have to get this off my chest.
I have just
finished reading the book The thine. It was written by Holly Black, an author I
hold in high regards due to her Curseworkes series. That said, I found this
book to be a real let down in a lot of way. Yet, one moment that really got me
fired up happened towards the end. Spoiler alert: the childhood friend of the
main protagonist dies. Murdered as a result of a chain reaction that the
heroine HERSELF set in motion. Not intentionally, but she was involved in it
none-the-less.
We can
already see there’s a lot of trauma. Not only did she lose pretty much her only
friend, but it was because of something she did. The grief, the guilt, the
mourning… One would expect this to be a very powerful thing. A whole chapter
worth of material if not more. But what ends up happening? The protagonist gets
pulled away, they briefly mention she cried herself to sleep after an argument
with her boyfriend. Cut to next day where she wakes up and basically TRIES ON
OUTFITS. I was starching my head, wondering if I missed a page or ten. Even the strongest character have some sort
of a mood shift is something like a death of a friend happens.
But ok. There
was still the thing with the dead friend’s brother still being held captive. The
girl was probably going to put the emotions away till they resolve this very
urgent matter. Thing is, afterwards there are so many random interactions and the
main pair bickering over completely irrelevant relationship problems, that the urgency
gets lost. In fact, it makes things look so ordinary that I forgot that her
friend just died! And it wasn’t like they had to go through any of it. They
knew where the brother was! They should have just went there instead and got
him! They didn’t gain any insight or learned any special skills talking to
other people.
Then the
climax FINALLY happens and the epilog starts. It’s the friend’s funeral. Her
brother also just figured out his sister died. It starts out somber enough. And
theeeeeeen… the brother offers the girl a bouquet of pixy sticks. ARE YOU
KIDDING ME? They don’t talk about his dead sister at all, it’s never shown if
the brother asked how she died, or how exactly he was effected by it. Nope.
Just pii sticks and off goes the brother so the girl and her boyfriend can have
a finishing conversation about kisses with a magical plastic prancing pony. (I
am not kidding about the last one)
I was just
in shock. I knew the sister might not have been a major character in the story
overall, or very interesting for that matter. Yet, it was obvious she must have
meant something to the protagonist. We see them interact; we see that they hang
out a lot. This should have been a bigger deal! It’s not something you brush
off for kisses and pixy sticks.
Thing is,
this wasn’t the first time I saw death of a friend handled so insultingly
sloppily. A while back I also read another book titled Fallen by Lauren Kate.
The first half seemed decent, I guess. Then things started to get weird, then
boring or downright silly, but the end was just offensive.
So, just to
illustrate my point, I’ll try to summarize real quick. The main protagonist is
held in a school for delinquents. She doesn’t make a lot of friends there, but
there is one girl that is really nice to her. She’s described as fat and a bit
of a loner or maybe even a little geeky, but she’s really nice and helpful. She
stays with the protagonist even when things get life-threatening, but in the climax
she gets murdered. The protagonist is shocked, but doesn’t really have time at
the moment escaping from a crazy killer lay. Afterwards, she gets saved by her
hot angel boyfriend and then it feels like: “Friend? What friend? Oh, you mean
the fat geek that basically covered my ass the whole story and was killed due
to associating with me? Pff, who cares! She was just a human! I wanna party it
up with all the angels and I don’t need her weighing me down. I’m off to the
tropical islands now, bye-bye!”
I admit
that I have forgotten the ending a bit, but I think that she doesn’t even bother
staying for the funeral.
So yeah,
that makes two books where a dear friend dies and the author treat it like the
protagonist’s favorite shirt got ruined. Additionally, it also pulls in the
mentality that everything’s fine as long as there is a hot stud to embrace you
and tell you that it is not your fault. It’s busy and clustered, downright
disrespectful to the deceased! Remember when there were whole revenge plots
made because someone got murdered? Wasn’t that long ago I think.
Remember
writers; show your characters the same respects you would to a real person.
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