"OK - Best death scene in a BOOK?" Topic

There's a nice thread on Movies about this, and I was wracking my brain to think of one that really affected me – but I couldn't.

All of my favourite Death Scenes are from Books. I won't tell my favourite, as people will accuse me of being monomaniacal about it – but what is everyone ELSE's favourite Death Scene from Literature, and why?

Pat

I haven't a favorite death scene… But a few books have died way before the end…

P.S. Off thread it did reminded me of a funny story, a friend of mine (a total book worm) was harping on about how good a book he had bought from a car boot sale was, so much so that his constant chit chat about the book was driving his brothers mad, they decided to exact revenge and remove the last pages of the book so he will never know the ending…Always brings a smile to my face when I recall that story…

Heinlein's THE LONG WATCH is a good one.

The 2 most memorable death scenes that immediately come to mind are:-
The death of Hotspur in Edith Pargeter's, "A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury"
The Crimson Wedding in George RR Martin's "A Storm of Swords"

The ones that come to mind at the momement are:

Holman's death in Richard McKenna's "The Sand Pebbles"

Claudius Cinna's Death in Gregory Solon's "The Three Legions" (a 1956 novel about Arminius Teutonicus – "Herman the German" – bushwhacking the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest).

And, of course, Boromir's death at the beginning of "The Two Towers".

Harry Hotspur goes pretty well in the Shakespeare version, too.

Though in real medieval battles I imagine they didn't stop to make speeches quite so much, and actually hit each other a bit more.

Waylander from David Gemmmell's series. I was staggered by how Gemmell worked it out and was fighting back the tears while reading it on the train. Terrific.

Boromir in the Lord of the Rings is very moving.

The Gospels present a very moving death scene. I find the King James translation especially powerful, even if you are not a believer.

The death of Ahab in Moby Dick also comes to mind, as does Peter Benchley's homage in Jaws…

These three are probably the ones that most imediately come to mind.

Curiously enough they are all thematicly linked..

King Arthur in "The Once and Future King".

OK, if this qualifies (since A. Conan Doyle later said "just kidding!"): Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls.

Cushing ran down the last of his guns to the battle-line.
The rest had been smashed to scrap by Lee's artillery fire.
He held his guts in his hand as the charge came up the wall
And his gun spoke out for him once before he fell to the ground.

Armistead leapt the wall and laid his hand on the gun,
The last of the three brigadiers who ordered Pickett's brigades,
He waived his hat on his sword and "Give 'em the steel!" he cried,
A few men followed him over. The rest were beaten or dead.

A few men followed him over. There had been fifteen thousand
When that sea began its march toward the fish-hook ridge and the wall.
So they came on in strength, light-footed stepping like deer,
So they died or were taken. So the iron entered their flesh.

Lee, a mile away, in the shade of a little wood,
Stared, with his mouth shut down, and saw them go and be slain
And then saw for a single moment, the blue Virginia flag
Planted beyond the wall, by that other flag he knew.

The two flags planted together, one instant, like hostile flowers.
Then the smoke wrapped both in a mantle-and when it had
blown away,
Armistead lay in his blood, and the rest were dead or down,
And the valley grey with the fallen and the wreck of the broken wave.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is practically a novel-long death scene.

Sydney Carton in a Tale of Two cities.

The death scene in Elmore Leonard's KILLSHOT. I won't say whose death, as that might spoil it for anyone who actually decides to check the book out. I highly recommend it.

When I was younger, I enjoyed the death of Sturm in the Dragonlance series, and how it served to make readers truly realize that, her affect on Tanis notwithstanding, Kitiara WAS a villain and should be regarded as such.

This is not technically a book, and technically we don't SEE his death, but the fate of Fortunato in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" still gives me the creeps.

The fates of Liet-Kynes and Dr. Yueh in DUNE stick with me, too.

Let's see…

Smaug: hammed it up.

Arwen: a footnote.

Saruman: nicely wraps things up. Sorted.

Allen

Hedwig from the final Harry Potter book. It just shocked me.

The way king Harold bites it, in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (I put it into my novel that way too, gotta love all that gore).

1066.us

Mercutio in "Romeo & Juliet": "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man."

My number one is Cluny the Scourge's death from Redwall- it is the best death scene I've read, probably because it's so unique and violent for a children's book. Although the alternatives during that final battle aren't any less violent.

The "red ruin" at the end of Hamlet.

Andrew

Boromir!

Strum Brightblades death in the Dragonlance series, was the first one that popped into my head.

I second Huscarle's nomination of The Crimson Wedding in George RR Martin's "A Storm of Swords"

No country for old men by macarthy where the killer has the wife:

"you dont have to do this"

"everybody says that"

classic

Any death in Herodotus' "Lives" provided once you get through the endless pages of portents forshadowing the Great One's passing to be. "Some say a cow gave birth to twin car insurance sales agents, as a sign all was not well with the universe." Or something similar.

Druss

Farley Mowat's And No Bird Sang describes Mowat, a Canadian infantry Lt in Italy in WWII, entering a building and nursing a dying German with his liver and guts lying beside him. The whole sort book is very intense and this particular passage is an emotional culmination to that point of Mowat's whole experience and his mental struggle to stave off "the worm".

Jo in "Bleak House" – and Krook, for that matter.

Doc Daneka's "death" in Catch-22.

JW

Huron-Fall & Temiter in The Flight Of The Eisenstein.

Tyrions revenge. I forget which book. It was indeed glorious though.

Harold, in "The Golden Warrior" by Hope Muntz….

Oh, hehe, caught again by thread necromancy; I already mentioned Harold's death in one of the original sources (depends on the day the question is asked, I guess)….

Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit.

Nice mixture of glory and penitence.
Nice mixture of pagan and christian feel.

Kat in "All Quiet On The Western Front" .

Let's be honest, folks. The best death scenes are in children's books.

Charlotte, in Charlotte's Web
Old Yeller
Where the Red Fern Grows

The death where your throat catches and you go, "no, that can't happen" but you know of course it can, because it has to happen, because it's real and true and it hurts.

Those are the best death scenes.

And children's writers do it better than anyone else.