Why don't you read books where animal dies?

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Fenika

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Really? It blows my mind every time I see this. Animals are mortal. They die, through loyalty and sacrifice or otherwise.

I really would like to know more of the rationale behind this choice.
 

charlotte49ers

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I will read them, but something about how they can't verbalize anything and then they die...I dunno! It's just sad!
 

Snowstorm

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The same reason as when a favorite human character dies and the writer projects such poignancy that it rips my heart out: too sad. Heart-rending emotion, whether on the page or on the screen, affects me for days. Life's too short.
 

Polenth

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I don't object to them dying. I don't like it as an emotional shorthand though. For example, when a bad person kills a puppy, as a lazy way of showing they're a bad person.

(I also don't like the opposite of an otherwise terrible person being shown as 'a nice person really' because they're kind to kittens.)
 

Libbie

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I read books that deal with animal death. I won't read them if the animal death serves no purpose other than to shock. Just like I won't read any other book where death doesn't do much for the plot and is only there to titillate.
 

Nivarion

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I don't object to them dying. I don't like it as an emotional shorthand though. For example, when a bad person kills a puppy, as a lazy way of showing they're a bad person.

(I also don't like the opposite of an otherwise terrible person being shown as 'a nice person really' because they're kind to kittens.)

I know. It is a cheap trick when about the only villainous act that you get to see him do is kick the dog.

Its not like its even something that is that bad. Now killing a small child, That'll let the reader know this guy is evil.


And to the OP. I actually don't mind when the animal companion dies. I've lost a lot of pets too, and it sucks. But its also a reminder to our mortality.
 

katiemac

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I've knowingly and unknowingly read books where animals die. If the book is about the animal, like a certain memoir, then I especially won't complain.

But gruesome animal deaths in fiction stick with me and bother me more than human deaths, I don't really know why. I won't necessarily stop reading the book, but I also won't pick something up that promises lots of puppy torture. That's just no fun.

Like Polenth says, it can be a cliched trademark of an evil person (yes, I know this is a sign of behavior in real life), but like anything it's got to be done well.

If it has a real, significant and solid purpose then I won't begrudge the author.
 

Vespertilion

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"Rationale" implies that I've thought about it and made a conscious decision to get more upset when an animal dies in a story than when human character does, but I can't say that's how it works for me. I can't tell you why I can watch a "tearjerker" movie where a human dies and not bawl my eyes out, but when an animal (or monster) dies, it just hits deeper. I also cry more for animation than live-action, which is probably even weirder.

Myabe it's because animals as characters are boiled down to their essence--they are what they are, and it's a sort of purity. The same with monsters--often they can't help what they are, or are doomed from the beginning.

I guess there's a sort of distance with the human protagonist that is missing with an animal. The human can often help themselves, their death is a choice, or at least inevitable--the animal is always helpless in the end, no matter how fierce, loyal, or sweet.
 

katiemac

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Myabe it's because animals as characters are boiled down to their essence--they are what they are, and it's a sort of purity. The same with monsters--often they can't help what they are, or are doomed from the beginning.

This is what I was thinking, as well. If a person dies in fiction, it's the character. You might be upset or you might not. But if an animal dies, you can usually say it's a "placeholder" for any animal, as it wasn't really a character. Of course, you have animals who are characters in of themselves--like Marley of Marley and Me--in which case it can be just as sad, if not more so.
 

Wayne K

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I don't like when animals die in books because I'm not dumbed down to it like I am humans dying. Murder of humans is glamorized in movies and TV, not at all with animas. I never thought about that till you asked the question. I read for enjoyment, and I can skip over a human death for a good story. I honestly can't wth books.
 

maestrowork

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It's rather odd that some people do have a lot of emotions on animal's death in fiction, meanwhile characters can die right and left and that's okay.

BTW, my WIP opens with an animal's death -- it's a hunting scene. So be warned. :)
 

kct webber

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I can't say I've ever been more effected by an animal's death than by a human's. It's all about how it's written, really. I certainly won't refuse to read a book because animals die. Shit, animals die in a few of my stories.
 

The Lonely One

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Really? It blows my mind every time I see this. Animals are mortal. They die, through loyalty and sacrifice or otherwise.

I really would like to know more of the rationale behind this choice.

Honestly I think it's a matter of sensibilities.

I hate sports fiction (there are exceptions) despite liking sports in real life.

I accept animal deaths in fiction despite not particularly liking them in real life. Same as human deaths. It's also a lot (and this has all been rehashed before, just so you know--puppy slashing seems to come up over and over like frickin adverbs...) to do with how a person sees an animal philosophically and the death itself really plays on that with anyone.

Like if a puppy gets killed in a gruesome way, we're all going to react with different sensibilities.

I, for instance, believe humans are a breed of animal. We are equals (to me) and we all end up in the same dirt one day, so joke's on you guys who have a superiority complex. Ha-ha. You're gonna die.

But I digress... I think my reaction plays off that belief. I would expect or want characters to do what they can to protect innocent animals, perhaps at the risk of their lives, because that's what I would do. My dog and cat are family members. Others think animals don't have souls and humans do (which I would tell God--bad move. We're fucking idiots), so that might play a part.

Or any variation on the hierarchy or if animals are meant for food, etc.

If it's torture porn it will come across as torture porn, period, but how much we can handle will differ from reader to reader.

Am I wrong? Probably. Leave me alone. It's late. :)
 

The Lonely One

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It's rather odd that some people do have a lot of emotions on animal's death in fiction, meanwhile characters can die right and left and that's okay.

BTW, my WIP opens with an animal's death -- it's a hunting scene. So be warned. :)

Hey hunting scenes are a great dynamic. There's always a lot going on in the ambiance. For some reason hunting in fiction always makes me think of that Jack London story.
 

DeleyanLee

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It depends on if they're a character or not, whether or not it bothers me.

Say with Ray's opening, whatever animal is being hunted isn't a character to me, so it makes no nevermind to me if they get killed.

If the animal is a character, has a presence and a personality, then their death will hurt as much as if a favored human character dies--but it can be worse if that death is a sacrifice or not. Animals are sentient, but they're no more intelligent than children. It's not a matter of purity to me, it's the fact that I don't believe they can make a thought-out decision whether or not to sacrifice themselves or not. I don't believe that a healthy dog, for instance, can conceptualize that throwing himself in the way of that bus could get them killed because, I believe, healthy animals don't think about their own death the way we humans can. I just don't see that animals can make those choices that I take for granted as a person.

Thus, when an author has the animal doing something fatal that, for a human, would be heroic, I find it out of character for a real life animal, thus making it a cheap and obvious emotional-button pushing authorial device. Ruins the story for me on so many emotional levels that I refuse to knowingly do it.

All this doesn't apply if, for whatever reason, it's proven that the animal IS capable of making human-like decisions (Dean Koontz's Watchers comes to mind).

But that's why I won't read stories where an animal or child gets sacrificed heroically--they couldn't've made the decision, so it's a fake heroism.
 

CaroGirl

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I read the stories I'm interested in reading. If an animal dies as part of the story, an animal dies. I'll decide after I read it whether I thought it was necessary to the story or gratuitous.

How do you know before you read a story that an animal will die in it?
 

Roger J Carlson

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Human deaths, whether in fiction or real life, bother me much more than animal deaths.

One thing that has always puzzled me about people bothered by animal deaths is -- why are there different levels of distress for different animals? People are bothered by the deaths of kittens and puppies, but generally not by the death of fish or reptiles. What makes cute mammals intrinsically more valuable than fish or reptiles?
 

CaroGirl

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Human deaths, whether in fiction or real life, bother me much more than animal deaths.

One thing that has always puzzled me about people bothered by animal deaths is -- why are there different levels of distress for different animals? People are bothered by the deaths of kittens and puppies, but generally not by the death of fish or reptiles. What makes cute mammals intrinsically more valuable than fish or reptiles?
The death of a companion animal, one that appears to "love" its owners and has a relationship with them, feels like more of a loss than the death of a random toad that got smucked while ambling across a busy highway. It's a matter of perspective, I suppose.

I don't feel animal death more keenly than human death, but I do understand that the intrinsic value of certain animals to certain people varies depending on the animal and its relationship to the human. Only makes sense really.

Read Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows and then come back.
 

CaroGirl

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Word of mouth or reviews, generally. The vast majority of my fiction reading comes from recommendations from friends.
So, when you read reviews or someone hands you a book to read, do you specifically think to ask, "Do any animals die in this?" and then reject it if the answer is yes? I'm not judging, I just think that's an interesting criterion for selecting novels to read.
 

Roger J Carlson

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So it's not really the death of the animal, per se, that bothers people, but the human attachment to them?
 

DeleyanLee

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So, when you read reviews or someone hands you a book to read, do you specifically think to ask, "Do any animals die in this?" and then reject it if the answer is yes? I'm not judging, I just think that's an interesting criterion for selecting novels to read.

It can affect the decision, yeah. It also depends on what friend is doing the recommending and knowing their preferences for such things. Many of my friends are far more vehement against animal/kid deaths than I am, so I take that kind of feedback as part of their overall judgment of the book. I have a friend who will wallbang the book and blacklist the author if ANY animal or child dies in the pages. I'm not that extreme in my reaction.
 

Lyra Jean

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My grandmother was very affected by animal death. She couldn't even watch nature shows where lions are hunting for food because it would upset her. She could never really explain it.

I think it does have a lot to do with the human attachment to the said animal. I was very attached to my fish and even though I wanted to switch my tank over to different fish that were easier to take care of I couldn't just "release" my current fish or let them die. It just seemed wrong. So I'm definitely voting for human attachment to the animals.

If you don't like animal deaths don't read the "All Cats Go to Heaven" collection. While there are some very heart warming stories in there like the cat who ends up in dog heaven. There is one story in there that still haunts me to this day. I read this collection in high school which was over ten years ago. I have always been a cat owner which is probably why the stories affected me so much.
 
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