Why do fictional deaths really hurt so much?
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?Â
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?Â
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. Â
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. Â
Ultimately, fictional deaths hurt not because our minds fail to distinguish between reality and fiction, but because literature deliberately evokes such emotional processes. Literature, then, also serves not only as a form of entertainment but also as a significant reflection of the human experience, and as a way to prepare readers for it.
