I was writing a poem on Friday to a prompt that asked me to start each line with “I had the happy idea....” and also the invitation to complicate this. One line of my poem came out of my feelings about this week’s reading:
“I had the happy idea that death can be more than a hole in a story, / that it can be a door called conundrum / and coalescence.”
I think this is one of the most nuanced and substantive deaths I’ve read, not just a leverage point in the plot/emotional landscape or a simple tragedy, but a continuation of a character arc. And seemingly not one that had to end that way for the story to make sense either; something that happened partly as a result of the character’s decisions but also just something that happened, interacted with the past experiences of the characters, and leaves the consequences to ripple out.
Right, it's not a "good" death or a story death. It feels just very real. From my understanding, writing death like this was pretty unusual at the time. But for us modern readers it makes Andrei and those around him seem more real and relevant to our lives than most characters.
I was writing a poem on Friday to a prompt that asked me to start each line with “I had the happy idea....” and also the invitation to complicate this. One line of my poem came out of my feelings about this week’s reading:
“I had the happy idea that death can be more than a hole in a story, / that it can be a door called conundrum / and coalescence.”
I think this is one of the most nuanced and substantive deaths I’ve read, not just a leverage point in the plot/emotional landscape or a simple tragedy, but a continuation of a character arc. And seemingly not one that had to end that way for the story to make sense either; something that happened partly as a result of the character’s decisions but also just something that happened, interacted with the past experiences of the characters, and leaves the consequences to ripple out.
Right, it's not a "good" death or a story death. It feels just very real. From my understanding, writing death like this was pretty unusual at the time. But for us modern readers it makes Andrei and those around him seem more real and relevant to our lives than most characters.
Ah perfect. I started to think about writing a whole piece on death and doors. A future project I think.
Promising idea!