The Ethics of Character Assassination

Alternatively titled, why oh why, Olivie Blake, did you kill Callum Nova.

Abstract: In which the author gets overly emotional about the death of a book character and writes an essay to categorize the deaths of literary characters for the purpose of further justifying her argument about why said character should not have died.

Hem, hem. I believe that no further prologue is needed: on to the categories! 
These are, obviously, of my own design and by no means perfect classifications, and a lot deaths may fall into more than one category. However, I do think that many significant deaths that I know of fall into one or more of these categories.

Thematic Deaths

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are the protagonists of the novel Never Let Me Go. The three have been cloned solely to

donate their organs and, ultimately, die and live out each day with this knowledge hanging over them.
Contrary to expectation, the protagonists do not “rage against the dying of the light”. They, for the most part, live out the lives charted for them, and die the deaths planned for them. Their deaths do not have the heavy handed melodrama of a tragedy, they are not a surprise, only an inevitability. But the lack of surprise does not signify a lack of emotional weight.
Society calls their deaths the most important part of their lives, after all, our protagonists have literally been born to die. The three protagonists have lived extremely contained lives- lives of predetermined length and limited possibility, lives within a capsule. However, as Ruth, Tommy, and eventually Kathy, trot off like sheep, one by one, to the grave, one realises that their lives were not merely the quick spans of time till their deaths, and their deaths were not the meaningful parts of their lives.
The understated deaths of the main characters shed light on the the novel’s true message- that the best parts of humanity can flourish between the constraints, and even a ‘life in a capsule’, may contain volumes of weight and emotion.

As their deaths most importantly underscore the novels discussions humanity, acceptance, and purpose, they can be classified as “thematic deaths”.
These deaths may not, as with the protagonists of Never Let Me Go, affect the plot or the world greatly, but do contribute significantly to the novels ideas. Generally heavily foreshadowed, thematic deaths are mostly unsurprising. Their main purpose, is to harmonise with and reinforce the novels themes. However, in spite of the foreshadowing, or perhaps because of it, these deaths are very emotionally resonant.
A well written thematic death can truly transform a novel and give it meaning, as in this little story.*

I remember the moment it struck me, on my second reread of the Fault in Our Stars, aged thirteen, that Hazel Grace would die.
I had read the book earlier, when I was eleven, but without ever managing to connect the dots. I had somewhat enjoyed the book, liked the characters, was vaguely appalled by their many pretensions, liked the appropriately bittersweet ending.
There was nothing strikingly tonally dissonant, so I didn’t put much thought into it.
So, the second time, sprawled on my bed, mid-afternoon sun induced slothfulness, kindle in one hand, feeding myself swollen green grapes with the other- suddenly, everything shifted- drastically. Hazel Grace was going to die.

Yes, a girl with advanced lung cancer is going to die- Hardly a major revelation.

But it was for me back then.

We are desensitised to miracles as children. So by the time we are in our pre-teens, miracles became mundane propositions. Beloved fictional characters especially have squadrons of extremely diligent, over-worked, underpaid guardian angels. (The administration in heaven must have clearly cracked down on unionisation).
Accordingly, eleven-year old me concluded based on prior experience that Hazel Grace would miraculously recover, stage-4 cancer or not.  (And yes, 11 year old me did read the passage where Hazel explicitly stated she would.) After all, she hadn’t died within the pages of the book- and that was as good any guarantee you could get within the world of fiction.
Thus, for me the realisation was ground-breaking. Things just fell into place now so much more… elegantly. Hazel’s death brought weight and meaning to the books ideas of the impact of grief, of how life can be meaningful even if it is brief, of the nature of oblivion and death, of the foibles of fate… it transformed the book from “an appropriately bittersweet journey and conclusion” into something far more thought-provoking.

Anyway, this incident, to me, symbolises the true impact of a thematic death A well written thematic death resolves all the suspended questions and ideas of the book into a final majestic cadence. Death gives life meaning, and, to put it bluntly, a well-written thematic death gives a theme substance.

Thematic deaths are the most satisfying of all the deaths. They can be heart-rendingly, achingly sad. But they are satisfying in a way only closure can be.

Plot Deaths

Primrose “Prim” Everdeen is not a character we encounter often in the story. Though she is a highly sympathetic character as an innocent child, her death does not immediately cause the reader too much emotional anguish because she does not directly play a major role.

However, we observe Katniss’s deep love for her, so even though we do not “feel” her death strongly, we “feel” the devastating grief of the protagonist, her sister Katniss. Prim’s death acts as a turning point for Katniss to fully reconsider the morality of the direction the rebellion is taking, and motivates Katniss to kill Coin in the stunning climactic scene of Mockingjay.
In the most brutally simple terms, Prim’s death affects Katniss, who in turn affects the plot. It is not her death that affects the readers, but the repercussions of her death, as they provide an impetus for the events of the novel to unfold. So it is with all plot deaths. Plot deaths are fundamentally catalysts for the plot or the other characters.
Martyrdoms like Prim’s, most deaths in murder mysteries, most “tragic back-stories” are all examples of plot deaths. They may provide an shocking twist, ignite a moral reckoning or fuel the protagonists journey.

A moment of silence of for all the family members and friends whose deaths were a convenient source of much-needed motivation for the hero. Patroclus, you live on in our hearts.

However, by no means are plot deaths bad, (they are only for the most part badly written). Indeed, the death of Primrose Everdeen is indeed an exceptionally well-written death, and is one of the most memorable parts of the Hunger Games series.

Mid-arc deaths

The most important thing Willy Loman, the titular salesman of Death of a Salesman, sells is his version of the American dream. His sons are his best customers, and have completely bought into his idyllic yet hollow vision of the American Dream, where likeability and charm, rather than hard-work, will be the golden ticket to success.

But when Biff stops buying into his fathers worldview and thereby rejects the very core of Willy’s identity as a salesman, Willy becomes increasingly desperate, even as he finds himself slowly becoming old and redundant.

Both Biff and Willy face deep crises, Biff tries to distance himself from Willy’s illusions, while Willy faces the prospect of having his illusions shatter before him, as he is neglected and mistreated in his dotage. But while Biff comes to terms with reality and his relationship with his father, experiencing a full character arc, Willy remains stranded in an unhappy limbo between delusion and realisation all the way to his eventual suicide, and though he changes over the course of the story, never achieves understanding and the sense of achievement that comes with it. Willy Loman dies unenlightened and mid-arc, and the novel is poignant and unforgettable for the contrast between the incompletion of his character arc and finality of his death.
Mid-arc deaths punctuate stories as jarringly as an incorrectly placed exclamation mark. They do not end sentences, they shatter them. They are desperate screams into the void- does existence or grammar have any meaning; is there any, any point, when our frail conceptions of life and language are so offhandedly destroyed.

Arc End Deaths

These are a truly strange variant of deaths, and can can be sub-classified into the negative arc end death and the positive arc end death.
The negative arc end death is the more recognisable variety. Macbeth’s death at the end of the play of the same name is a negative arc death.

The negative arc death is often the culmination of a character’s negative character traits and actions, just as Macbeth’s death is the culmination of his spiral into callousness and hubris, the bloody end to his fall from grace. Their death is often seen as retribution, as a character getting his or her “just deserts”. It can be singularly cathartic and satisfying, as balance is restored to the divine scales.

The positive arc end, however, is often singularly unsatisfying. Matthias from the Six of Crows duology is a positive arc-end death. Matthias overcomes his prejudices against the Grisha and accepts his feelings for the Grisha Nina Zenik. His heist-mates, the Crows succeed at their quest. A happily-ever after with Nina seems within reach. And then he dies. Killed trying to open the eyes of another soldier who shares his former prejudices. His death, is the
final touch to his positive character arc. He dies actively battling the poisonous idealogy he used to live by. And, in a way, its poetic. But…

Well… Rest in Peace Matthias Helvar. As Nina Zenik said, he was better than waffles.

Yossarian Lives

Death peppers the World War 2 satire Catch-22 like machine gun fire. Most of it is painful, pointless and exceedingly undignified. Most of it is caused not by the enemy, but by the maddening bureaucracy and mismanagement of their own side. The war is such a chaotic, confused whirlwind, not merely of bombs and bullets, but also, more egregiously, of red-tape and ulterior motives, that Yossarian’s quest to live at times is viewed as quixotic. The characters perish, one by one, ingloriously, in vain, tragically ridiculous and ridiculously tragic.

But Yossarian lives. It is that fact that makes the novel sing with triumph, it is a glorious gold spark amidst the grey blur of moral chaos the novel depicts.
The fact that Yossarian lives transforms what what would have anyways been a clever satire, but would have only been a clever satire, aesthetically and intellectually satisfying as only a miasma of pessimism can be, into something which is moving and memorable.

Sooooooo what about our very own Callum Nova?

As previously stated- he dies. But why?
Was it a plot death?
His death contributed nothing to the plot, occurring at the very end of the book post the climax, and did not resolve any of the idealogical and emotional tension between Libby and him, between Tristan and him, between Reina and him at all.

Was it an arc end death or an mid-arc death?
Callum does not die at the end of his character. Yet Blake gives him a highly rushed, half hearted, pre-moment of-death epiphany that prevents his death from being a true mid-arc death either. His death had neither the crispness of a mid-arc death, nor the closure of the arc-end death.
Was it a thematic death at all? Callum Nova, vaguely suicidal, convinced about the meaningless of life, dies - after a hyper speed epiphany discovering the meaning of his life during his dying moments? Rather confused, is that not?

So why did the Blake kill Callum? Shock value?
A character as well written and developed as Callum’s deserved a meaningful ending. Not necessarily happy or sad, but an ending that made some, some, modicum of literary sense.

I would have accepted Libby killing him. I would have accepted Tristan killing him. I would have accepted him dying heroically, or dying by suicide. I would have even accepted him dying by liver damage- a fairly justifiable choice, considering Callum’s lifestyle. But how much more would it mean for a man as deeply miserable Callum Nova to get to live?


*(Though this is obviously a weird example, because the death does not actually occur within the span of the book, I believe the semantics of are irrelevant in this case, as a thematic death does not need to contribute to the plot of the novel, and this example would also not be possible if the actually did occur within the book.)