A Fate Worse Than Death

A friend and fellow writer wrote a post in her blog.  In it, she said, "With all this craft talk of tensions and stakes, what stakes are greater than life and death?"  And I can't really answer that question.

Death is powerful.  Death is ultimate.  And outside of comic books, death is final.  It is The End, even moreso than the last sentence in a story.  Greater stakes than this, that is hard to imagine.

The irony, though, is that death is kind of played out.  It is easy to comprehend, even though it is still difficult to process when it is somebody you care about.  Death is considered cheap to many, especially literary critics. But I find that to be its own irony, since death scenes are often top contenders in the most powerful scenes in a work.

So, with the power of death established (despite the literary critics), we return to the question: What stakes are greater than life and death?  I still can't really answer it, because I am not completely sure.  But imagine there has to be.  For one thing, anything is possible.  For another, we specifically have the phrase, "a fate worse than death."  That kind of phrase doesn't exist if there wasn't something for it to refer to.

I know that traditionally the phrase referred to rape.  I can imagine that being worse than death.  It is a violation of the body and a mental scar.  I can also think of variations that involve continuing to live in some form of anguish.  Being crippled, whether by old age or accident, yet having a perfectly sharp mind could be a living hell.  Conversely, living with a mind that you know you do not have full control of could be awful.  I understand that H. P. Lovecraft wrote stories about people who, upon discovering truths of the universe that were beyond human comprehension, often went mad from it.  This again could be a fate worse than death.

Still, though, I'm not sure if I buy it.  Both death and non-death can be done very well and both can be done very poorly.  I don't feel confident saying that death is the highest of stakes, nor that it is not the highest of stakes.

I will say, though, that death, as well as some of the other top contenders mentioned, are quite serious.  If you want to tackle them, treat them seriously.