Death: Drawing the line

A character in my novel dies within the first few chapters.

Not just a generic character, either; some Mr. Smith whose only role is to die at the hands of the main villain to make him look evil and sinister. No, I actually quite enjoyed writing for the character, and their backstory and personality was as deep as any of the others who live on.

At the time, when my writer's group was critiquing it, I received plenty of requests from them to bring this character back to life. It's a fantasy, after all; magic can move mountains, can foresee the future, can bring fire forth from nothing. Why not revive the dead?

Why not indeed.

While I would sorely love to bring this character back into the novel, I'm remaining steadfast in my belief that what is dead should remain so. If death is merely a state of being, a temporary setback for the character to endure, then it cheapens the entire concept of death. After all, if we could bring people back to life in reality...

Bob: Alright Mick, you going to see Danny in the hospital later?
Mick: Nah, not really.
Bob: Why not? He's just come back to life and he could really use some support.
Mick: I would, but I mean... it's only death, isn't it? It's not like it's fatal...

The death of a character should have an impact upon the reader; both the immediate emotional response but also the lingering feeling when they've finished the book, when they think "That was a great ending... it's such a shame Danny didn't live to see the peace he fought for." If you bring a character back to life, you leave only that immediate response. Even then you run the risk of losing that in the future; the next time a character dies, the reader simply won't care. Not just within the novel they're reading, but anything of yours they read in the future. After all, death wasn't an obstacle before, was it?

I think a perfect example comes from a videogame; Final Fantasy 7. Unlike most games that you've heard of, FF7 actually had a story. Not just 'aliens are attacking! Fight them' or 'Save the princess!', but an actual gripping, involving storyline. During this story one of the main characters dies. It comes as a big surprise, completely out of left field, and I'm not embarrassed to say that it was a very moving movement. I actually choked up a bit.

The entire gaming community tried for years to find a way of reviving this character. There were cheats (all fake), hacks (sort of worked) and dozens of conspiracy theories. Entire gaming communities dedicated themselves to finding a way of reviving this character.

And that's the point. They cared. The death of this character moved them; so much so that they wanted her back by any means possible. If she had been revived as part of the story, would they have shown such fervor?

:-Paul.