FernFoxBones

taking a stone that's thrown at you, polishing it into a jewel, and putting it in your crown.

Reclaiming a slur is not:

at you, and hurling it at

someone else in turn.

You sigh deeply as you turn the last page and read the last few words. You want to cry–not because something has been lost, but because something has been found. Why is it that the deaths of some of our favourite characters leave us with such a profound, insurmountable feeling? After all, they’re just fictive elements, just words on a page…right? 

This essay will examine a question that many people–writers and readers alike–have attempted to answer (and I will attempt the same): why do fictional deaths really affect us so deeply? 

The Literary Perspective

In order for a fictional death to affect the reader, the author must first ensure that the reader is emotionally attached to the character that is dying. For this to happen, the author must achieve a certain degree of realism, which, in our case, is a ‘psychologically and socially plausible character’, as David R. Shumway puts it in his journal article titled ‘What is realism?’. A ‘psychologically and socially plausible character’ is one that the reader can bond with as if they are real. For example, in the critically acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro presents the character of Kathy H. with such emotional authenticity and relatability that the extraordinary premise of the novel fades to the back of the reader’s mind, receding away behind the familiarity of her thoughts and relationship with the world around her. Aristotle argued that tragedy is written for the purpose of catharsis; death, then, is also a visceral form of catharsis, a purging of the emotions.

It is important to note, however, that fictional deaths would not affect us nearly as much as they do if they did not feel so climactic. In Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, emotional intensity is accumulated over an exceptionally long story, before reaching its devastating conclusion.      Frank Kermode argues that just as humans used to believe humanity’s reckoning would come in the form of a major apocalypse, a personal death is a more contemporary, modern reckoning.  

Death forces us to look back and interpret a life, and it does much the same in works of literature, causing the reader to evaluate the story as a whole from a changed perspective, making the story more meaningful. It’s a resolution of sorts, bringing us even closer to the narrative, and in the process, the character, too. In A Little Life, Yanagihara allows the reader to witness not only Jude St. Francis’s suffering, but also his moments of joy, humour and hope over decades as he ages. This creates a feeling of prolonged intimacy between Jude and the reader, causing the reader to reinterpret everything that comes before his death. In this sense, then, the ending functions not only as a conclusion, but also a lens through which the entire narrative is understood.

The Psychological Perspective

It is understood that in order for the death of a character to be affective, we must be emotionally attached to said character. But why do we care despite knowing that the character is not real? Why do our brains respond to emotional stimuli we know aren't real? Neuroscientific research suggests that this might be due to mirror neurons–our brains processing fictional characters the same as real human beings; our neural pathways firing in the same way. Crystal L. Park argues that we feel grief because of meaning-making, the idea that we have a global belief system, a set of values and beliefs. When something happens that clashes with this belief system, people tend to feel distressed. These psychological processes are not merely interesting, though; during adolescence they may even play an important role in emotional growth. Fiction provides a safe environment for teenagers to experience emotionally taxing feelings such as grief, anger and sadness, aiding in the development of emotional literacy in young adults by giving them the words to verbalise and recognise the emotions they are feeling and helping them learn how to cope with negative emotions, hence encouraging empathy.  

a woman ?” i’m a knight on

a quest hope that helps

A Nervous Old Man (right) and his Emotional Support Violence Machine (Left)

GIRL THE EGG COLUMN IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. YOU DO NOT NEED CONVINCING YOU NEED CONVICTION.

IS REASON ENOUGH. BE A

GIRL TODAY RIGHT NOW

This is actually a great question! I sort of reflexively used "incandescent" as a synonym for "brilliant (fury)" and didn't think of why a word literally meaning "glowing" stuck in my hand as shorthand for "angry", so this ask made me look it up

Turns out that "incandescent" used LITERALLY as an adjective means "bright, brilliant, glowing, dazzling", and used FIGURATIVELY it can be applied to almost any emotion or expression of feeling to heighten it- like how "he said hotly" means "angry" without SAYING "angry", or "she said brightly" means "energetic" without SAYING "energetic".

So someone can- figuratively- be incandescent with joy, or have an incandescent smile, or simply APPEAR incandescent.

But speaking out of anger, I reflexively wrote that "something infuriating has happened- I am incandescent", so the reader's only clue to my meaning g would have been the context of the previous paragraph.

Which is actually fascinating, because it implies that 1. I've READ and HEARD so many others say "incandescent with rage" so often that my brain equivocated it with "rage", suggesting that over time the word itself might completely change meaning if enough people start slipping into a similar pattern, and

2. For some reason, when we were first creating language, we decided that "hot, bright, fiery, burning" were ENERGETIC before even fully understanding the science behind energy, and that conversely, "Coldly, glacial, icy, frosty" were words for FLAT, EMPTY, VOID"

And more median words like "warmly" or "cooly", just like moderate temperatures, are linked to moderate emotion

Which I can only guess has something to do with the human circulatory system? A rush of hot blood when angry, a warm glow when comfortable, and icy when shocked or upset.

Everyone is just super cool and can move around in restricting clothes.