okay, starting back in the begining of what is currently called fantasy literature, it's always solved by killing the problem-- dracula: kill the vampire, hill his slaves, victorian life is saved. poe: die at the end, you folly no longer matters, normal society is saved. later, tolkein: everyone dies or as good as dies to fix the problem-- and this is also where modern thinking starts subverting the deathwish; frodo doesn't die, but is traumatized his whole life and 'goes into the west' which is a kind of death without dying. modern stuff: lyssar dies and is reborn a new person, but has to symbolicly die again because in the modern world, we know that death itself just leaves the problem for others-- and mckinley's books often do this. aerin was 'no longer quite human', harry all but gave her life. that one based on sleeping beauty (and maybe the other one, which i haven't read yet), but i can't remember the details just now... modern interpretations of the stories, like in snow white, blood red and the others after it, take the weird ways around death, but it's still there, having to be dealt with, standing as the easy way out of the problem. movies, too: donnie darko, which isn't really scfi, matrix, which is but functions as fantasy, all the 80's fantasy movies...
my hypothesis is that the deathwish comes from fantasy being so closely associated with the subconscious, the un-logical-- there, away from science and progress, it makes sense to solve the unsolvable problem by killing it or yourself.
it needs work, refinement, but that's it in a sort of big nutshell. a coconut shell.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-05-20 05:10 pm (UTC)dracula: kill the vampire, hill his slaves, victorian life is saved.
poe: die at the end, you folly no longer matters, normal society is saved.
later, tolkein: everyone dies or as good as dies to fix the problem-- and this is also where modern thinking starts subverting the deathwish; frodo doesn't die, but is traumatized his whole life and 'goes into the west' which is a kind of death without dying.
modern stuff: lyssar dies and is reborn a new person, but has to symbolicly die again because in the modern world, we know that death itself just leaves the problem for others-- and mckinley's books often do this. aerin was 'no longer quite human', harry all but gave her life. that one based on sleeping beauty (and maybe the other one, which i haven't read yet), but i can't remember the details just now...
modern interpretations of the stories, like in snow white, blood red and the others after it, take the weird ways around death, but it's still there, having to be dealt with, standing as the easy way out of the problem.
movies, too: donnie darko, which isn't really scfi, matrix, which is but functions as fantasy, all the 80's fantasy movies...
my hypothesis is that the deathwish comes from fantasy being so closely associated with the subconscious, the un-logical-- there, away from science and progress, it makes sense to solve the unsolvable problem by killing it or yourself.
it needs work, refinement, but that's it in a sort of big nutshell. a coconut shell.
~:)