The 5 Most Gut-Wrenching Literary Deaths

We've all read (hopefully you read regularly) those books that we love, but that make us cry like little babies when a certain character dies. In some ways the loss of the character makes the book even better (I won't say enjoyable.) and more profound. Here are my top 5 most difficult and poignant literary deaths in no particular order.

SPOILERS!

1. Helen Burns in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane meets Helen at the boarding school she is sent to by her evil aunt. Jane's life is rough and the school is deplorable. But there is Helen with bright red hair and a sweet kindness - Jane's first friend. Jane's world is brightened by Helen's presence and friendship, and reading the book, you really feel like finally Jane has someone who cares about her. It's beautiful. When Helen contracts and dies of a fever most likely due to the conditions at the school, we feel the loss as surely as Jane. Bronte makes us fall in love with Helen's friendship as much as Jane. When that is tragically ripped away, the only happiness we have felt in Jane's life is gone. We empathize with Jane, and we too are hardened by the experience. But that didn't stop me from crying my eyes out when I read it. Not Helen!

2. Stormy Llewellyn in Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

While the movie did a pretty good job of telling the overall story, I felt the love story between Stormy and Odd is so much better understood by reading the book. You really understand their intense and deep connection. True soulmates that doesn't even have to speak to communicate their love. It's what every couple aspires to. Odd and Stormy have this force running through them that can only be called fate. They are two pieces of the same whole. When Odd realizes that Stormy is visiting him as one of the silent dead, this surety is broken and lives are shattered. I remember tears running down my face as I finished the book, and I just knew nothing would be the same. and even though I knew what was coming, I cried again when I watched the movie. That's how profound the pain was. Oh it hurts!

3. Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." This opening begins a juxtaposition between England and France at the height of the French Revolution, but it is the similarities between Sydney and Charles Darnay that actually end up being the device to conclude the story. Sydney's love for Darnay's fiancé Lucie is made manifest in his last act on the earth when he switches places with Charles in jail to free Charles but condemn himself to the guillotine. In the climax, the drums are banging a steady rhythm as Sydney is walking to his death. The guillotine falls with the beat as do his footsteps. Boom. Boom. Boom. It is the most selfless act of heroism I have ever read. Sydney gives his life to save the one of his rival all because Lucie loves him, not Sydney. In the very end, he only wants her happiness, at whatever cost. On pain of death. Boom. Boom. Boom. Say what you want about Dickens and his lengthy writing, but at the end of the day, he could tell a story. This death has stayed with me for years and I still find myself hoping that Sydney has found happiness somehow.

4. Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

I have to admit, I was angry at Rowling for these. First Harry loses the only "family" that has ever cared about him in Sirius. Sirius is also Harry's tie to his parents. Harry is able to be connected to them through Sirius's stories. When Sirius is killed by Bellatrix, we lose that connection so it feels like we are tripling the loss. By losing his godfather, Harry also loses his parents all over again. Crushing.

When Dumbledore sacrifices himself by having Snape murder him, he is giving Draco Malfoy a shot at a real life, but in essence removing one of the only adult figures that always believed in Harry and was always trying to help him. Harry is left broken and vengeful with his rage directed at Snape. The reader is also left in confusion, and definitely upset. Why Dumbledore, why?! Harry is all on his own trying to find the horcruxes with nowhere to start and a head clouded by grief. While this loss does propel the story of Harry, Ron, and Hermione's friendship forward and serve as the purpose of them teaming up, it still hurts so dang much.

5. You decide! What's been the hardest death of a character you've ever read? Let me know in the comments!

Honorable Mention: Bing Bong from Pixar's "Inside Out"

It is only an honorable mention because Bing Bong isn't a literary character. But I WEPT in the movie theatre when Bing Bong sacrificed himself for Joy and Riley. If a movie makes me cry, it's pretty good. If a movie makes me break down in sobs in front of strangers, it's lasting. Take her to the moon, Joy! All. The. Feels.

Imhotep by Jerry Dubs

I got this book as an ebook download from BookBub because it was free and historical fiction - two of my favorite things.
After being transported to ancient Egypt (think thousands of years before the Great Pyramids) through a door created by a simple slip up in hieroglyphs, three American tourists try to find their way in this new time and place, but also find their way back home. They must survive the wild terrain as well as several political plots and attempts on their lives. While you guess pretty early on that the protagonist Tim will become Imhotep, luckily that is not the climax of the story. Tim, of course, decides to stay in Egypt and becomes the most recognized name from that era.
My favorite thing from this book is Dubs's imagery when he describes the way of life in ancient Egypt. How he explains daily life and even the concept of work vs time is so poignant and it really impacted me. You really feel that you've been transported to this other time and place. Dubs does a great job of conveying the feel of the landscape through the characters and their interactions with others. It is haunting and lonely with a touch of the otherworldly.
I recommend this book to anyone. I loved it.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I really didn't know what I was getting myself into when I started reading these books. I enjoyed the movies (because who doesn't like dystopian badass women with bows and arrows fighting for their lives against an evil tyrant), but I wasn't prepared for how much I would lose myself in the books. Immediately after finishing The Hunger Games I ran out to get Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I read the series in about 2 weeks (I do have a full time job, and I'm addicted to TV). I absorbed them. You get so much more out of the books than you do the movies, which I find to be true about pretty much all books-turned-movies out there. Plus, having the inside track on a character's thoughts really gives you a lot more to go on when trying to understand their actions.
Collins creates a believable, fractured world system in which the government can choose children from each District to fight to the death as a reminder to not ride up against the powers that be. The people of the Capitol are so removed from the reality of Katniss's District and other poor Districts that the juxtaposition is constantly bringing the reader into unity with Katniss. The character really comes alive because she is thinking what we are all thinking.
Katniss is such a complex character that you can't help but believe her veracity. She is straightforward in her goal - staying alive. She really hasn't thought too much about love or boyfriends because she's constantly trying to feed her family and provide for them back in District 12. When the Hunger Games start, she eventually realizes that she will have to show the world watching that she and Peeta are deep in love if she has any hope of survival. He's likable and, to the viewers, has been trying to help Katniss the whole time. Katniss just sees the boy with the bread, the boy who saw her at her lowest and saved her life, the boy she can never repay. She knows she can't kill him, this boy who gave her family a future, but she has to walk a fine line of survival and love story. For Peeta, it's real. Katniss has been his dream since the day he first saw her. But Katniss has to "fake it til she makes it" and play a role to win her life. By the end, she's not sure where the pretend stops and the real feelings start. In the arena, with Katniss and Peeta as the final two tributes, Katniss makes a decision to test the Capitol's resolve. Will they allow both victors to live and appease the masses or force them to take their own lives and have a Hunger Games with no victor? When Seneca Crane, the designer of this year's Hunger Games finally tells them that they both can live, Katniss thinks she has finally won her freedom. However, by standing up to the Capitol, Katniss has unknowingly become the face of a revolutionary movement. Now she and Peeta are in danger. To convince the Capitol and President Snow that they aren't revolutionists, Katniss and Peeta must continue to play out their love story for the cameras. With the Games over, Peeta realized Katniss was only pretending. He's hurt, but he also wants to live. They decide to only play their parts when cameras are on them. If they aren't being filmed, they don't even talk. It's a difficult life to live, but they have to survive. Katniss is confronted by feelings of guilt for betraying Peeta, but she's unsure if she's really betraying him. She might love him, if she had time to give it any thought. But that thinking creates friction between her and Gale, her best friend who wants to be more than friends. He isn't convinced it's all an act on Katniss's part, and while he knows that she had to do what she had to do in the arena to survive, he can't help but be hurt to learn that she loves Peeta, true or not. Gale has been with Katniss through every hard time in her life, but he couldn't be with her in the Hunger Games. He couldn't be the one to help her or the one she shared feelings with. Suddenly he feels useless to her and jealous of that baker.
It seems every character is fighting to understand what they really feel and why. Peeta is fighting between loving Katniss and holding back from her because he can't be sure how she feels about him. Gale is trying to reconcile that Katniss's feelings were an act and his feeling of loss and jealousy over her actions. Katniss is trying to understand how going from trying not to starve got her attention from two young men that she suddenly has to decide how she feels about. She feels pushed to make a decision that she can't make yet because she isn't sure how long the Peeta-Katniss love story must go on to appease the Capitol. She also has never thought about how she feels about Gale. He's just always been there for her. He was a constant in her life that she didn't know she needed to claim or lose. Over all though, is the shadow of the Capitol and President Snow making this "love triangle" and the confused feelings almost insignificant were it not for those feelings having saved Katniss and Peeta's lives.
Bottom line: it's a story of real people with real feelings and an incredibly real tyrannical government dictating the lives of individuals. How those lines intersect makes for a wonderful, terrible story that grabs you and won't let go until you know how it all ends.

National Readathon Day!

Saturday, January 24th is National Readathon Day sponsored by Goodreads to help the National Book Foundation! Join me and countless others across the country as we read from 12pm to 4pm this Saturday. The National Book Foundation is a nonprofit committed to promoting literacy and reading programs as well as to broadening the reading audience in America. That's definitely something I can get behind. Whether you want to join in reading, start a reading party, or just make a donation, visit the National Readathon Day page to learn more.

This Saturday I'll be reading Tempt the Stars by Karen Chance. This is book 6 in the Cassandra Palmer series. I got hooked on this series in college, and now I gobble each one up (when I get to it on my to-be-read shelf).

I'm excited to have a set time carved out to focus only on reading. It seems like I usually try to cram in a chapter here or there, so to dedicate myself to four whole hours... Well, I can't wait to fully immerse myself in the world of Karen Chance!

I'm trying to raise $200 to support the National Book Foundation, and have already donated to a cause I believe in highly. If you also feel led to give to this organization, please visit my donation page. Every little bit helps!

If you plan on reading, what's the book you won't put down for four hours? Let me know in the comments!

Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen

My father-in-law recommended this book to me and subsequently lent it to me in the summer. I returned it as his Christmas gift. It goes without saying that I have made it a resolution to read more books in 2015. I mean, 6 whole months to finish one book??? The situation is dire. Since then, however, I have actually read 6 books, so I feel pretty accomplished. I'm starting off the year right. Strip Tease started my reading habit back up, so I just have to review it.
This is the only novel by Carl Hiaasen I have read as of now, but it will not be the last. If Strip Tease is any indication of his writing ability, I'm in for years of reading pleasure.

The story follows Erin Grant, a stripper with a heart of gold who lost her job and decided she could make more money taking her clothes off for men than working for the government (duh). Erin went through a costly divorce to rid herself of a drug-addicted, abusive husband, but since her ex is a criminal informant and Erin is a stripper, Darrell got custody of their daughter Angela. So Erin spends her nights shaking it on stage to get enough money together to pay for her lawyer to fight against the ruling.
One night a man in a fake mustache visits the club, and when a bachelor party gets a little rowdy and snuggly with Erin, the mustachioed man takes a champagne bottle to the bachelor's head. The man gets escorted out by his entourage who paid off the bouncer to let them leave. The bachelor ends up in the hospital.
It turns out the fake-mustache guy is Senator David Dilbeck. Only one other person at the club actually realizes this though, Mr. Peepers, a man who has a crush on Erin and watches her dance almost every night. He tells Erin he has a plan to get her custody ruling over-turned. Obviously, a Senator would have some pull with a civic judge. Mr. Peepers' black mail scheme doesn't exactly play out though, and he ends up sleeping with the fishes. Turns out, Dilbeck has a "handler" that keeps him out of the newspapers using payoffs and, apparently, even murder.
On vacation, homicide detective Al Garcia finds the body of Mr. Peepers and decides to investigate. With the help of Erin, Shad, the bouncer at the club, and the FBI, Detective Garcia ends up closing his case and looking forward to vacations without dead bodies. Erin gets custody of her daughter while her ex definitely ends up getting his. I won't ruin that story for you; it's a good one. Plus there's the fiance of the man in the hospital and her cousin, a lawyer, looking to make a easy million for so with their own ideas for black mail. And the ever-present brains and muscle behind Senator Dilbeck that add to the stories varied characters and growing plot lines. So much happening in such a average sized book. Hiaasen knows how to add color to a story without everything coming out muddied.

What a fun book! The characters are rich and witty while the varying plot lines intersect each other to make a web of beautiful fiction. Everyone is out to get something in this story, and Hiaasen does a great job of explaining their motivations and processes without being boringly specific. There's a semi-crooked lawyer, a scheming fiance, FBI agents, strippers, bouncers, feuding clubs, sugar daddies, playboys, wolves, trailer parks, and pretty much anything else you can imagine that might happen in Florida. When their goals meet in the climax, it's a heck of ride. Plus, you gotta love a story with a happy ending.
What I enjoyed most about this book was the witty and dry humor Hiaasen writes. Sometimes it's situational, what with pasta wrestling at the club getting the health inspector called in, but most of the time one of the characters has the perfect quip at the perfect moment that makes you smile, if not laugh out loud. I recommend this to anyone looking for a fun, stand-alone book to bring up their reading mood (I just finished Gone Girl, so I need a palette cleanser myself.). You'll thank me for it.