25 Fictional Deaths From Which I May Never Recover

So we talked about fictional characters that won’t die.  However, sometimes fictional characters will die.  And I am a crier, so I usually get hit pretty hard by these deaths. For me, it’s easier to be emotionally involved in fiction, than it is to be emotionally involved in real life.  Pathetic, but true.  Most of the time, I cry the first time; but then I get over it and each time I read it, or watch the movie, it becomes more acceptable.  On the other hand, some of those deaths, I want to cry just thinking about it.  And here are some of those deaths. 

WARNING:  If you hate spoilers---there will be spoilers.  Don’t read if you don’t want spoilers.  I’m talking about characters that will die.  I’m going to spoil things.

 Oddly, I’ve heard that a lot of people feel this way about a lot of Hunger Games characters, but I don’t.  I think it’s because the deaths in Hunger Games are so quick and then the story moves on.  Apparently many people feel this way about (Spoil Mockingjay) Finnick.  I didn’t.  Because, at first I didn’t realize it had even happened. Two and half paragraphs later it actually struck me, “Holy Schnikies! Did Finnick just bite the dust?”  I then went back a few paragraphs to reread it and realized, “Oh, heavens, yes, he did…and quite gruesomely, actually.” And then, they just kept going.  I didn’t even cry for Finnick.  I’m not sure anyone in the book did either, except Annie.

Anyways, here are some that I will never stop crying about:

  
Note: I have included their final words.  If I didn't include them, it's because I don't know them.  If you know them, let me know and I will put them in.  I want it to be complete.

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1. Charlotte from Charlotte's Web
 

"'Good-bye!' she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him. She never moved again."

I read this book again last summer when I was a nanny. And yes, I cried again.  The quiet manner in which Charlotte dies, and how she just sacrifices everything for Wilbur.  It’s just heart-breaking.  And then Templeton doesn’t even want to carry the sack!  Anyways, I will never stop crying for Charlotte. 

2. Searchlight from Stone Fox

 

The fact that I hate dogs and I’m still including this one…that’s a big testament to Searchlight.  In third grade, we read this book, and one of our assignments was to write the chapter after the ending.  To my recollection, almost everyone wrote Searchlight back into life.  She wasn’t dead!  She’d only passed out!  The complete devotion and the pain of the little boy (whose name I don’t even remember--Billy?) surpassed all description, and we knew that Searchlight deserved to live.

3. Leslie from Bridge to Terabithia

 

This is the first time I remember getting tears physically in a book.  Not the only time it has happened, but the first time I remember it happening.  The thing that’s probably a little disturbing about this one is that I don’t know I was crying for Leslie, but for Jesse. 

4. Dobby from Harry Potter

 

Movie: “It’s a beautiful place to be with friends.”

I have no idea why this one hits me so hard.  Quite frankly, I always found Dobby a little obnoxious.  But when Dobby died, I couldn’t help myself.  Maybe it was the metaphor for slavery and the “Here lies Dobby, a Free elf.”  But whatever it was… waterworks.  Every time.

5. Boromir from Lord of the Rings

Movie:  “I would have followed you, my brother.  My captain.  My king.”

Book:  “Farewell, Aragorn! Go to Minas Tirith and save my people!  I have failed.”

I liked Boromir.  The movie kind of makes him in a wuss, but in the book it is clear that his being tempted by the ring doesn’t make him weak, it just makes him normal.  Being able to withstand the ring is phenomenal strength.  Boromir just wants to protect his father and his people, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And though it’s not in the book, his death line in the movie is beautiful.  “I would have followed you, my brother.  My captain.  My king.” 

6. Theoden from Lord of the Rings

 

“Hail, King of the Mark!  Ride now to victory!  Bid Eowyn farewell.”

Theoden is such an interesting character, and it breaks my heart each and every time he dies.  Interestingly in contrast to the previous, his last words in the book are better.  Part of this is because in the movie, he’s talking to Eowyn, which just seems sappy.  In the book, he’s talking to Eomer and says, “Hail, King of the Mark! Ride now to victory! Bid Eowyn farewell!”  It’s very kingly, and very about his people.  And then about his family, who are still the most important thing to him.

7. Simon Birch from Simon Birch

"I gotta go now." 

Self-sacrificial deaths are always the worst/best. And when Joe Wentworth bawls like a baby, I’m just there with him.

8. Gavroche from Les Miserables

   “I have fallen to the ground,

 It's the fault of Voltaire, 

 Nose in the gutter, 

 It's the fault of...” 

(The next word is supposed to be Rousseau, but he gets shot before he says it...and yes, it rhymes in French)

It seems odd that I call The Hunger Games death too fast, and then put Gavroche on there.  Because even though in the book his death takes about 3 pages, that’s a quick death for Victor Hugo.  And in the musical, it is very quick as well.  But the quickness of the death, in this situation, expertly manipulates you.  Gavroche is a symbol.  A lot of people who only know the musical don't know that.  He’s supposed to be the (at the time) proverbial child of the century and product of the Revolution.  He is the hope that the French Revolution gave, but no better off than any of the children before the Revolution.  And with one gunshot, all the hope that the Revolution created is dead. 

9. Tony from West Side Story

   “There’s a place for us.  Somewhere a place for us. Somehow!  Someday!   Somewhere!” 
 

I am kind of a purist most of the time when it comes to adaptations.  But I like the fact that only the Romeo character dies.  Because, as much as I don’t want to insult the bard, Romeo and Juliet was never a very realistic story. Yes, they’re silly and immature, but even so…dual suicide? West Side Story emphasizes the hate between the families and the tragedy of the death and how stupid and pointless that death was, and is much more poignant.  You hate the stupidity of the death and the circumstances that drive that gang relationship, without thinking, “Seriously?  Romeo?  Juliet?  Get it together, guys.” Instead you think, “Oh, Tony and Maria, you two, poor, young lovers.”

However, Tony's death is then overshadowed by Maria's "How many bullets, Chino?" speech right after.

10. Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter

"I dunno know.  Wands out, d'you reckon?"  

I always liked Cedric Diggory.  In fact, I wanted to marry him at one point in my life.  Hufflepuffs are the best house (J.K. Rowling agrees), and Cedric is the epitome of potential.  And yet, Voldemort wands him down (like gunning him down), for no reason at all.  He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

11. Albert Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie TV Series

“Laura.  Are we gonna let those young’uns catch up to us?” 

Yes, I am fully aware that this character doesn’t even exist in the books.  But he doesn’t even die for much purpose.  He just gets leukemia and dies.  For what purpose? None.  I guess that’s human existence, but I cry every time.

  

12. Silena Beauregard from Percy Jackson

 

“Forgive me.  Charlie...I see Charlie…”

This character has the “unfortunate” mother of Aphrodite.  As such, she kind of feels like she’s not really useful in the battle against the Titans.  But she does what she can.  Maybe the children of Aphrodite can’t help much, but she can sure bring the children of Ares to the battle and they will.  She has her moments of not perfect behavior, but she redeems herself. 

13. Prince Ellydir from The Chronicles of Prydain

"Too much of my strength is gone.  I fear Morgant has given me my death wound.  I can do no more." 

I don’t know why this one hits me hard.  I don’t like Ellydir.  I never did, and I never will.  But when he throws himself in that Cauldron…oh, man oh man.  I lose it.

14. Kit Snicket from Series of Unfortunate Events
  

“The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one. But the light of a bright world dies, with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one, yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.”

So many people die in The Series of Unfortunate Events, that you start to get desensitized by it.  So you’d think by book 13 of every good character these kids run into being killed, I wouldn’t mind Kit Snicket’s death.  And yet, I do.  Maybe it’s the maternal sacrifice to a child she doesn’t even know.  Maybe it’s the fact that finally the Baudelaires had safety and someone to care for them.  Whatever it was, Kit Snicket…you will be in our hearts forever.

15. Pasha from Dr. Zhivago

"I can see why you might hate me." 
 

Pasha is the major reason I can’t deal with the 1960s movie version.  Can’t even watch it.  Pasha was not a blood-thirsty Bolshevik.  I mean, yes, he’s part of the Red Army, but not because he has some obsession with killing people.  He is doing it because he loves Lara, and he wants anyone like Komarovsky to pay the price for what Komarovsky did to Lara.  It’s misguided and misdirected, but that’s part of what makes him so intriguing.  He is passionately and madly in love with Lara, but he can’t get over what he knows she’s been through, and he can’t get over the fact that what the imagined together will never be.  How does the starry-eyed lover of Pasha Antipov become Strelnikov?  And then how does Strelnikov again become Pasha, the guy who shoots himself in desperation that he can kill all he wants, but it will never rescue Lara from Komarovsky?

16. Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities
  

 "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
 

Every time I read this book, or watch the movie, it’s just waterworks.  Sydney Carton was suicidal, there’s no doubt about that.  But, unlike many suicidal people, he was adamant that he die in a way to help others.  Which, as sad as it is that he’s suicidal, is so beautiful at the same time.  Also, his love for Lucie that he would die to save the man she loves.

17. Deacon from Saints and Soldiers

"Go! Now!  I'll be right behind you."
  

This movie is just one big death-fest.  There are five main characters, and only two of them live, and only one is not seriously wounded.  But Deacon’s death is the one that makes me the saddest.  At the same time, though, it makes me not sad because he gets peace from his PTSD.

18. Spyros Pappadimos from The Guns of Navarone 
  

I don’t have any explanation for this one.  Spyros is a born-soldier, and doesn’t have a lot of personality, but I still lose it every time it shows his face as he gets hit repeatedly by the machine gun of the Nazi-dude.

19. Ashley Pitt from The Great Escape 
  

We’re talking about the WWII movies for the moment, so we’ll throw this one in there.  Again, I’m not really sure why I care about this one so much, because Ashley Pitt wasn’t exactly a character that you got to know very much, but I can see him in my mind’s-eye staggering across the railroad tracks, hand over his abdomen and then falling down from the Nazi bullet.

20. Jean Bonnet/Kippelstein from Au Revoir Les Enfants

A solemn handshake.  No last words.
  

This one is hard to put on the list, because he doesn’t die in the movie.  But it is said that he died in Auschwitz.  So, you’ve probably never seen this movie, it’s a foreign film.  But I love it.  It’s about a little boy named Julien Quentin who is at a boarding school in France during WWII.  He eventually learns that another one of the kids, Jean Bonnet is actually Jean Kippelstein and is Jewish.  Turns out that the priest who runs their Catholic boarding school is hiding Jewish children at the school.  The Nazis find out. And it’s a true story.  And I cry each and every time. 

21. Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies from Finding Neverland 
  

"Neverland."
  

A very sad ending.  But as she walks off into “Neverland” and we know that she’s actually dying, the tears roll down my face.  And then I partially recover.  And then Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore have their park bench scene talking about her, and I just start crying.  AGAIN!

22. Ray the Firefly from The Princess and the Frog

"Oh. I like that very much. Evangeline... likes that too..."
  

I didn’t even like this movie, but when Ray gets crushed (for NO reason!), I just go, “No!  Ray!”

23. Gwaine from Merlin

"I have failed."
  

It’s a five-seasoned TV show based on Arthurian legend.  A lot of characters die.  But when Gwaine bites it, I can’t take it.  I think part of it stems from the fact that I had begun to think Gwaine was entirely invincible.  This isn’t the first time Morgana has tortured him or gotten pleasure from nearly killing him.  In Season 4, she had a stint of making him fight more and more foes with fewer and fewer weapons arena style for entertainment, until he was fighting four men with a wooden sword.  So, when she really did kill him, I kind of lost it.

24. Boxer from Animal Farm 

 "Forward comrades! . . .  Forward in the name of the Rebellion.  Long live Animal Farm!  Long live comrade Napoleon.  Napoleon is always right.""
 

No explanation needed.  There are few things worse than being turned into glue.

25. Kili and Fili from The Hobbit

I don’t really know why on this one either.  J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t develop the dwarves very well, so I shouldn’t really have a strong connection to these two, but I do.  Maybe it’s the whole sacrificing yourself thing. Again.  Whatever it is, I can’t get over Kili and Fili. 

And  now, we will have our for virtual cookies quiz.  Since it's about people dying in books, it's the last words quiz.  I have here some fictional characters' last words.  Whoever gets the most gets the virtual cookies.

1. Tell your sister... you were right.

2. Brother, help me! 

3. For England, James?

4. To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee! 

5. Oh, My Dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to one another.

6. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.

7.  Blue.  No, yellow!

8.  The rest is silence.

9. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

10. Thus with a kiss I die.

11. Oh dear.  I hadn't thought of that.

12. I feel...cold.

13. Uth laynuma. Chespo kutata kreesta krenko, nyakoska!

14. Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Ah, I'm going! Aaahh!

15. My queen! My wife. My love...  

16.  Come on.  You can do better than that.

17.  It isn't fair.  It isn't right.

So, here's my list.  Do you have any that you would put on the list if you were making it?