I’ve never been a big fan of “Once upon a time they all lived happily ever after” storylines. These seem to be particularly pervasive in the movies but can also afflict literature. I think it would have been especially bold for JK Rowling to kill off Harry at the end of the Potter books. Apparently she did hint at that outcome at one time.
However as I move through this challenge I notice that more and more times, classical authors are not bound by such niceties it seems! Dickens for example is not averse to giving his heroes and heroines horrible diseases of the time as well as killing off fairly central characters and not only antagonists at that. I just finished the excellent Bleak House which is replete with deaths including one by spontaneous human combustion.
Obviously one expects darkness from the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka but I wasn’t quite prepared for the depths of shadow cast by the plots of stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Metamorphosis”. However I find this refreshing if that isn’t too perverse a misuse of that word. One also expects this from dystopian works such as Brave New World and 1984 which are, of course, designed to foretell a bleak, albeit fictitious future. The fact that these novels make one think, and have the power to disturb and maybe even to shock, is part of their great strength.
Personally I like this in literature. Watching Hollywood’s offerings, the only element of suspense is really how the heroes and heroines will prevail, and what nasty end will befall the villain. In literature though, one is always on one’s toes, wondering what will happen next to a character that we might even like. I think this makes such works both enjoyable from that aspect of suspense, but also, somehow makes the characterizations and plot lines seem more human and realistic.