I love to have a good cry over a book or a solid sob during a film. It’s hugely cathartic.
As I reflect upon these blubbering moments, I can conclude that 90% of the time they are caused by the death of a character. And I know that I am not alone here. Many people are affected by such an occurrence. But what I am interested in is the extent to which people are affected, and why. For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to call this scale of reactions the ‘blubber-metre’.
What role does the following play in influencing the blubber-metre: the characters’ age, the timing of the characters death within the book/film and our own personal experiences.
Let’s look at the first influencing factor, a character’s age. Is the ‘blubber-metre’ less affected by the death of an elderly character because we feel content in the knowledge that they have lived a long and fulfilling life? Is the ‘blubber-metre’ more affected by the death of a younger character because we feel cheated, on behalf of the character, for the life that they never had a chance to experience? A logical response to this thought would be that the death of an older character should affect us less than the death of a young character. However, here lies the problem. There is nothing logical about our relationship with characters. The beauty of good story telling is the authors’ ability to build a connection between the characters and the audience. Once this connection has been established, the ability to rationalise an elderly character’s death is almost impossible. We are reacting with our heart, not our head! A great example of this is my reaction to Noah and Allie’s death at the end of the Jessica Cymerman’s novel ‘The Notebook’. Despite having witnessed the ‘long and fulfilling’ life that both characters led, and irrespective of both characters dying happily in each others arms, when the book ended I gave the ‘blubber-metre’ a good working. I was inconsolable.
Based on this reasoning, I believe that the ‘blubber-metre’ can be significantly affected by a character’s death, irrespective of their age. This leads me to consider the extent to which the timing of a character’s death in the film or book can affect the ‘blubber-metre’. A logical explanation for my reaction to Noah and Allie’s death is that over time the author successfully established an emotional bond between the characters and myself. Does this suggest that the ‘blubber–metre’ reading is higher when the reader has been given a significant amount of time to establish a relationship with the character that dies? Again, I would say that there is no easy answer to this question. Logic would say yes, however there is another powerful element that we cannot disregard.
And here I introduce the third influencing factor; personal experience. Obviously the more time that you have to establish a relationship with a character; the more likely their death is to affect you (and in turn produce a high ‘blubber-metre’ reading). However, personal experience can disrupt this logic. My reaction to Gerry’s death in ‘PS, I Love You’ is a great example of how personal experience overrides logical reactions to a character’s death. Gerry died around 15 minutes into the movie. As far as I was concerned, insufficient time had passed for me to establish an emotional connection with him. Yet watching this movie on the plane as my husband and I returned from our honeymoon, I was inconsolable. In the space of 15 short minutes, I had subconsciously overlain my own life onto the lives of Gerry and his recent wife Holly. For me, Gerry’s death was so much more than a man dying and leaving behind his newly wed. It was my worst fear being played out right in front of me. In other words, it was not the character’s age, nor the timing of the character’s death that affected me. It was my inability to separate my own life from Gerry and Holly’s life.
The death of a character affects everyone differently. This is because we all have different thresholds for sadness. This is because we all have different emotional attachments with characters. And this is because we all have different personal experiences that we may or may not be able to separate from what is occurring in a book or film.
Based on my own reaction to characters dying in films and novels, I would conclude that I have a low threshold for sadness, that I bond easily to characters and that I struggle to separate my own personal experiences from the lives of characters that I am reading about or watching. Maybe this is why I am potentially more affected than others when a character dies? And maybe this is why I often find myself in the ‘inconsolable’ area of the blubber metre?
