Death and Dying

Venturing out of my genre this summer, I recently read the blockbuster The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Now this was definitely a title out of my element, as I tend to go for the gruesome, morbid, and suspenseful. It was a great book, and to my surprise, I was emotionally invested. Now, I am definitely not one for love stories, but something about this book sucked me in, and I was rooting for the characters till the very end, even though I knew what to expect. This got me thinking about the way the books on my booklist made me feel. Although I enjoyed reading them a whole lot and was sucked into the plot lines, I didn’t feel for/connect with the characters to the same degree. Although there is death in other books as well, especially in the ‘Sick-Lit’ genre, the approach the author takes in a murder mystery is quite different, which means that emotionally, they have different effects on you. Perhaps the reason for this is that the character that gets knocked off isn’t usually as well developed and we tend to meet him/her early on, so we don’t really form any sort of attachment. Personally, I found that The Fault in Out Stars evoked this weird mix of feelings… I was sad, upset, angry, happy, and overall, content with the way the story unfolded. With the murder mysteries, I find that I am usually preoccupied trying to figure out what will happen next, who I think the perpetrator is, and what I think should happen to him/her when he/she gets caught! In addition, I also started thinking about the emotional toll the death of a character has on a reader. Whether it be a murder, suicide, or sickness. This, in return, got me wondering about how you, the readers, feel when you read books that deal with death. What sort of emotions do you go through when a character dies? Does the manner in which the character dies affect the way you feel?