Literary Characters That Should've Died/Survived

Welcome to the first installment of "Coffee Break Thoughts" with Aarika. During this coffee break, Aarika had to consider the following questions: Which character do you think should have survived his or her story? Which character would you kill off?

The One Who Should Have Lived:
Aarika Baxter
Manager, Reader, Mom,
Coffee Villain



This one is for Queen Maas... Queen, I am coming for you! Bring back our Sam! He did not deserve the death he was given. He was a pure soul whose only crime was loving and adoring our super vain and egotistical Celaena. He showered her with love and attention, hopes and dreams, a future without death and blood, and you took that away from us.

I understand why he needed to die. I do. I understand why you destroyed my heart and my commitment to the pure cinnamon rolls in your books. But Sam?! He is the reason the books happened. I get it. But it's still not fair. Give him back to us! We're not okay! You have caused us all to need therapy and wine...so much wine. So much counseling. The vengeance dealt was not bloody enough for our Sam.

I get it. I am just not happy. 

The Ones Who Should Have Died:

This answer will not be popular. I promise, I gave this some thought. And sadly, I cannot come up with any character I have ever encountered that I thought, "Hmmmmm, this person should be dead." Okay, that's a lie. A bold faced, non-poker-faced lie. I am a liar. Jayna will call me out on it. Lance will set my pants on fire. Pinocchio and I will be rivals in whose nose is the longest.

There are so many characters who deserved death in so many stories across the time I have read, will read, thought about reading, or even briefly skimmed. But, and this is where my mind will not provide me an answer--It is not realistic for the people I wish to be dead (for whatever reason) to be dead. They will probably live another fifty years, get married, have eight children, find religion, and repent for their horrible deeds. (The ideal version of the story.)

I understand I'm supposed to be discussing books and these people aren't real, but even they were the most evil character to grace a story, not everyone deserves to die for their sins. Yes, some might deserve it and more. But, sometimes people work on their redemption and they have to be the bad guy in order to grow into the hero of someone else's story. 

Those are the stories I live for because I believe every sinner deserves a chance to redeem themselves. So I will refrain from wishing anyone dead, fictional or not. Maybe someone else will write them as a the hero no one else believed they could be. 

This post is brought to you with the help of coffee--all brands, all flavors, all sizes, just no decaf.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: Soul Search by Reyna Favis

Image
               Reyna Favis plunges us into the mind of our narrator, Fia, as she flees from a seven-year-old ghost boy. Just as she is about to make her escape, the ghost boy grabs her hand. Trying not to cause alarm in the man with her—who can’t see the boy—Fia tries to shake him off. When the boy refuses to let go, she attempts to blast him with her mental powers. Enter Zackie, a psychopomp who has taken the shape of a search dog. (Don’t know what a psychopomp is? I didn’t either. It’s a mythical creature who ferries the dead to the next life.) **Spoiler alert, psychopomps don’t like it when you fight their babies.**             Favis is laying the groundwork for a series in this book. Her characters are fleshed out well, so you don’t feel like they’re lacking. However, there are allusions to pasts that aren’t fully revealed. Fia doesn’t know who her parents are, and her foster par...
Read more

Author Spotlight: Maureen Morrissey

Image
Aarika and Jayna sent Maureen some questions to get to know her better. They are included here for your entertainment and in hopes that you will be further encouraged to check out Maureen's book Woven. The Two Bluestockings' review for that book can be found here !  Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want? I think writing is an art, and so I try to be true to myself when I write. I learned a lot about writing when working on Woven, my first novel. I learned about the difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction, after some well-meaning people tried to rework my book to make it fit a formula: intro characters, intro a problem, try to solve the problem and fail several times in spectacular fashion, solve the problem and live happily ever after. That did not work for this book and for a while I thought maybe I could not write a novel after all. But then I started to think about art and how an art dealer might have said to Picasso, “Yo...
Read more

Book Review: Woven: Six Stories, One Epic Journey by Maureen Morrissey

Image
     Maureen Morrissey is the author of Woven: Six Stories, One Epic Journey . In this novel, you watch the history of a family unfold from the great-grandparents to the fourth generation. Morrissey says in the author's note that this was her 2020 project that she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic.      Morrissey obviously is a history buff. I learned some things about World War Two that I didn't know like: a group of nurses crashed in the mountains and had to hike nine weeks to reach their destination and the Japanese actually put together prison camps that were equally as horrible as some of the camps in Germany.      The book is divided into two parts: his and hers. The "His" stands for Cam's story and the "Hers" stands for Tessa's story. The story begins with Cam's great-grandfather who fled to the United States to escape the Irish potato famine and threads down through the generations to Cam's grandfather who was the first in his family...
Read more