redefining death

essay for my lit class. i've been switching computers a lot lately.

“The shaman saw a boy even younger than he’d though, his slim body shivering in a torn linen shirt and his expression exhausted and savage and wary, but alight with a wild curiosity, his eyes wide under the straight black brows, so like his mother’s….

And there came just the first flicker of something else to both of them.

But in that same moment, as the lantern light flared over John Parry’s face, something shot down from the turbid sky, and he fell back dead before he could say a word, an arrow in his failing heart. The osprey daemon vanished in a moment.

Will could only sit stupefied…

… ‘Why did you do that?’ he shouted. ‘Why did you kill him?’

‘Because I loved him and he scorned me! I am a witch! I don’t forgive!’

‘You don’t know who he was, ‘he cried. ‘He was my father!’

She shook her head and whispered, ‘No. no! That can’t be true. Impossible!’

‘You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true! He was my father, and neither of us knew it till the second you killed him! Witch, I wait all my life and come all this way and I find him at last, and you kill him….’” (pg 284-285)

“What the hell?” I dropped my copy of The Subtle Knife on my bed and let it sit there for a few seconds.  “That was not cool,” I mumbled. John Parry was not supposed to die. It wasn’t fair. Will had a horrible life and already had to deal with too much: having an ill mother and leaving her behind, knowing that he had killed a man, and accepting his cruel fate with the Subtle Knife. Couldn’t something good happen to this kid? I felt silly and reminded myself that these weren’t Philip Pullman’s Happy Sunshine-and-Rainbow-Filled Materials, and that there weren’t supposed to be happy endings, and that characters were supposed to die. It kept the Materials Dark. I also realized that The Subtle Knife’s irony of having John Parry die right after he met his long-lost son left me hungry for the next book, thinking, “Well, what now? I need to know what happens!” It dawned on me that although at times I cried more about the death of characters in books than those of real people, death in books didn’t bother me so much, and I wouldn’t enjoy books so much had important characters not died. Some books are just better when characters die. I wouldn’t have enjoyed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as much as I did had Snape not killed Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Death strengthens plot, especially when it doesn’t signal the end of a character’s role on it. Killing characters off doesn’t make books worse. It actually makes them a lot better.

Firstly killing characters off is good because only some things are possible by death. For example, when Snape kills Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, readers are upset because they think that Dumbledore can no longer aid Harry. However, as it is revealed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore, by dying, is aiding Harry. Had Dumbledore not planned his own death, in which Draco Malfoy disarmed him, Voldemort might have killed him and ended up being the rightful user of the Elder Wand, which belonged to Dumbledore. In this case, Voldemort might have killed Harry. In The Amber Spyglass, Lord Asriel and Ms. Coulter also sacrifice themselves so they can protect Lyra from Metatron, the angel who is trying to kill her.

“The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra’s mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss.” (pg 409) Because Asriel and Coulter successfully kill Metatron, Lyra is able to find her daemon, displace the Authority, and become tempted. Dumbledore, Asriel, and Coulter didn’t die to try to help Harry and Lyra; they died to help Harry and Lyra. The sacrifices that characters, particularly those that serve as parental figures or sages, make in books are, whether he or she is aware of it, immensely beneficial to the protagonist.

Death can also act as an aid for the protagonist. In The Amber Spyglass, for example, Lyra and Will decide to travel to the Land of the Dead so Lyra can apologize to Roger, who she inadvertently killed in The Golden Compass and see Lee Scoresby, who died in The Subtle Knife, and Will can see his father, who also died in The Subtle Knife. Lyra, Will, and the Gallevspian spies’ journey to the Land of the Dead turns out to be very useful. While they are there, they manage to cut a window out of the Land of the Dead and convince the Harpies to let the dead travel through it so that their souls can roam in a living world. Mr. Scoresby saves Lyra’s life by letting her know about the bomb, and John Parry organizes an army of spirits that exits the Land of the Dead later so that it may fight the Authority’s army, giving Lyra and Will time to search for their daemons.

“‘We couldn’t hurt living creatures, that’s quite true. But Asriel’s army is going to contend with other kinds of being as well.’

‘Those Specters,’ said Lee.

‘Just what I was thinking. They make for the daemon, don’t they? And our daemons are long gone. It’s worth a try, Lee.’” (320-321)

Had these characters not died, Lyra and Will would have likely been killed, meaning that the Authority would have never been displaced, Lyra would have never been tempted, and the worlds’ order would have never been destroyed. In Night Watch, John Keel’s death aids Sam Vimes by providing a disguise for him.

            “’For a perfectly logical chain of reasons Vimes ended up back in time even looking rather like Keel! Eyepatch and scar! Is that Narrative Causality, or Historical Imperative, or Just Plain Weird?’” (pg 86) Because the real John Keel is dead and nobody else knows about it, Vimes is able to act as Keel in the Ankh-Morpork 30 years ago, live the legacy that Keel left behind, and protect his younger self from Carcer. Deaths like those of John Keel, Roger, John Parry, and Lee Scoresby and their resolutions work out too well for the plot – and the protagonist- to be coincidental. They provide wonderful openings for characters to enter and opportunities that later prove to be more ideal, and therefore make the story so much better.

            Although I do not regret throwing my book and being angry at Philip Pullman for a few minutes, I now see that John Parry had to die – I hate to think of what would have happened to Will and Lyra – and I see how much better The Amber Spyglass was because he died.  It really does suck when certain characters die (the death of Albus Dumbledore had me in tears and hating life for nearly half an hour, and I’d hate to think of how long and to what extent the Harry Potter mega-fans were upset ), but at the same time, it really does suck when nobody dies. Just because an author kills a character off doesn’t mean that he or she is killing the story. Just think about it. Death brings life into a story.