5 Most Iconic Deaths in Literature
and 5 bonus ones
One of the things I love about literary fiction is how it shines a spotlight on the darkness in ordinary lives. Family members get cancer. Friends fall out. Accidents happen every single day. And it is in literary fiction that we get the chance to examine such situations more intimately, recognizing how lessons can be learned and characters can respond.
In literary fiction, the death of a character is used by the author in any number of ways, and some examples still echo for decades after original publication.
Five most iconic death scenes in literature:
Obviously this list is subjective. Also obviously, there will be spoilers. However all of the books discussed were published at least twenty years ago (most long before), so I’m just going to remind you to get moving on your TBR pile.
(Picnic, lightning)
This is my favorite. It’s so understated and brilliant. Though death is not particularly influential on the plot of the novel, the death itself is not why it belongs on this list.
Instead it is execution, the description of the death in the prose, that is so memorable. This way this death is depicted is alluded to in many other pieces of literature, even to being used as the titles of various books and even satire. This exact phrase “(picnic, lightning)” appears in chapter two of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov,* and refers to the death of the main character’s mother.
A lot can be and has been said about this novel, and now is not the place for that discussion, but the very fact that this tiny death scene is so influential across the literature that came after it is as good of an argument as you can find about how brilliant it is.
Lily Bart in House of Mirth
The plot of House of Mirth by Edith Wharton* follows Lily Bart, a society woman in New York in the 1890s who, over the course of the novel, falls farther and farther from the upper class she was born into. It’s a story of a woman being pushed farther and farther to the margins of the life she knows, whose only possible redemption is anathema to her character. I love this book; I’ve read it several times and if you haven’t you should (check out Haley Larsen’s read along resources here).
As you can probably imagine, a novel about a descent from grace and privilege and status is… depressing. Lily’s prospects get bleaker and bleaker, and in the final section of the novel she is self-medicating with laudanum to numb her stress and anxiety so she’s at least able to sleep.
The reason I love this death so very much is it’s ambiguity. The novel ends with Lily taking a substantial dose of laudanum, falling asleep and never waking. The omniscient narrator does not tell the reader whether or not a lethal dose was Lily’s intention. With that fact left unknown, there is no real resolution to the mountain of challenges the main character faced.
Just like in real life.
I love literary fiction for this very reason. I love it.
Matthew Cuthbert, Beth March, Old Dan
Yes, three different literary deaths, but they all fall under the same category. It’s not quite fridging, but similar. These three characters — Matthew in Anne of Green Gables*, Beth in Little Women*, Old Dan in Where the Red Fern Grows* — are characters in their own right, but really they are there to inspire the main character. Their (side character) deaths spur the main character into further action that helps give said main character more motivation to go past what they thought they could do. To change their trajectory.
The novels these deaths appear in would be vastly different if the character did not die—as opposed to, say, Lolita, in which it’s easy to imagine a Humbert Humbert simply not giving a thought to his mother, alive or dead.
And as such, when Matthew, Beth or Old Dan die, it is always heart-breaking for both the reader and the book’s main character. (I’ve read Matthew’s death at least thirty times and cry each time).
Romeo and Juliet
Do I even have to say anything? This play by William Shakespeare is almost certainly the most well-known “love story” in the western world, despite the fact that it was written 1597. There are countless retellings* and constant revivals. Teenagers study this play. (My personal favorite version is Baz Luhrman’s 1996 film*, but then I was in high school when it came out so of course I loved it).
“Romeo and Juliet” is synonymous with teenage, all-consuming love. It’s synonymous with toxic family dynamic and conflict (it’s where the phrase “star-crossed lovers” comes from). It’s also of course synonymous with death by suicide because of said love. Romeo believes that Juliet is dead and decides he cannot live without her. Once he is dead, Juliet awakens and makes the same decision.
With a lot of very (very) well-known stories, the themes of Romeo and Juliet often get lost in the retelling (or retelling of retelling), but the fact of the lead characters’ deaths is iconic.
Dumbledore in Harry Potter
I didn’t personally get into the Harry Potter series until after book five came out, but that means that I read book six—The Half-Blood Prince*—immediately upon release, reading it for a whole day straight all the way to the end.
I cried.
And then I cried again when I watched the same scene in the movie.
The Harry Potter series follows the classic hero’s journey*, and within that framework Dumbledore is the beloved mentor who guides our hero on his path. But, as such, the mentor also needs to be removed from the hero’s sphere so said hero can fulfill his true, complete potential. I suppose that does not have to mean the mentor dies (Gandalf, for example, technically dies but then returns), but in the case of Harry Potter it does.
Dumbledore’s death solves or advances several plot lines neatly, all in a beautiful, heart-breaking package. The final book of Harry Potter—the resolution of the entire seven-book-arc—simply does not happen without Dumbledore’s death.
Honorable Mentions
(Because of course there’s more)
Lennie (Of Mice and Men*): Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife, and then George is forced to kill Lennie to save him from the purported justice the searching mob has in store. Classic ninth-grade reading, of course.
Piggy (Lord of the Flies*): I haven’t read this novel in more than twenty years, but I still remember this poor kid dying. In a book about chaos and savagery, it is Piggy’s death that marks the end of any kind of innocence or civility that the teenage boys might have still had left.
Jack Torrance (The Shining*): I think this book is King’s best, though the ending is very different from the movie’s ending. In both, however, Jack Torrance is consumed by whatever dark spirits are in the Overlook Hotel. He never had a chance to escape this story alive.
Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby*): If you remember your high school English class, you know that this book is all about the “American Dream;” Gatsby came from nothing, built a fortune, and then wielded that fortune to try to win the love and attention of a woman. When he is killed by that woman’s husband, his death also symbolizes the death of that dream, for Gatsby and other main characters. Maybe that dream was never actually possible.
Jesus of Nazareth (the Bible): Yes, I said Jesus. Don’t lie. Even if you were not raised Christian you probably know how Jesus died in the Bible. Whether it’s a historically accurate moment in time or not, the death of Jesus inarguably changed the world. Just look at the way Christian Nationalism is still in control of wide swathes of America.
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