Why is everyone killing off their main characters? In the academic year 2021-2022 at the liberal arts college where I teach, I was startled by the trend. A plot contagion. Nothing is off limits, I said to my short story writing class, but let’s examine our impulses. Why so much death? That year, even major characters and first-person narrators wound up dead, killed by strangers or friends or family members, often by parents, or serial murderers, or in accidents, usually right at the end at the story, no warning. After a while, each death was like being flicked by a rubber band. When I cautioned against group-think, the phenomenon increased.Article continues after advertisement
I don’t want to speak for these writers in the aggregate—each was in the process of discovering a singular universe. Plots often involved ecological disaster, war, corruption, corporate exploitation and extraction. But the stories had their own voices and aesthetics. Some were extraplanetary. Some local. Some took place in dormitories on campus, examining quiet moments between friends or lovers—even these inward-looking stories weren’t spared bloodshed that year. Family picnics ended in drownings; tender, bantering dates at Applebee’s concluded with car accidents.
