# Best death scene in a novel **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 8, 2011, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879 "2011-01-08T14:41:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/41 "2012-10-16T20:25:02Z")
Chief suffocating McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest hasn’t been mentioned in this (hee-hee) zombie thread. That one works on so many levels. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/42 "2012-10-16T21:45:39Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I am a fan of Peter O’Donnell’s _Modesty Blaise_ books, and for the longest time I couldn’t find a copy of the last book in the series-_Cobra Trap_. Finding it was bittersweet, for it contained the final Modesty Blaise/Willie Garvin adventure. Set about 15 years after the the previous adventure, they are off on a rescue when Modesty asks Willie to kiss her. In all the years they were together they were as close as any two people could be, but romance itself just never entered the picture. He hesitates, until she tells him that this is her last adventure because of a blood clot that would kill her soon. When it becomes apparent that they would have to separate, one to hold off the enemy and the other to complete the rescue, she stays behind and dies while in battle. Willie is able to get the innocent party to the border, but can’t make it himself. As he is running through the jungle, hit several times by bullets, the jungle slowly fades away and turns into a noonday summer’s field. His pain is forgotten as he sees a youthful Modesty waiting for him. > > I sometimes wish I had never found that book. It’s an ending which brings a lump to my throat. My recollection is slightly different however. Modesty dies when Willie is still with her; then he sets explosives around her body and tries to get away. The rest is as you described. To the OP: when I saw the thread title I came in to mention your example. His final thoughts and feelings seemed very authentic. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@Johnny\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Q)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/43 "2012-10-17T00:28:58Z")
Bobby Shaftoe’s death in _Cryptonomicon_ could count. After landing on top of a Japanese bunker, he is impaled on the antennas placed there. After cutting himself free, he fills the bunker with fuel oil. Looking to his escape route, he realizes that he isn’t going to make it, so he tosses a grenade into the opening to ignite the oil and after composing one last haiku, follows it in. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/44 "2012-10-17T21:59:02Z")
Almost a throwaway on this one. At the climax of _The Day of the Jackal_… [spoiler]Inspector Lebel and a gendarme he has randomly pulled from the crowd for assistance burst through the door of the Jackal’s sniping nest. Spinning from his position at the window, the Jackal fires his rifle at once, fatally wounding the gendarme. In that moment of greatest tension, as the hunter and the hunted finally meet, the narrative slides away into the flashes of sense and memory that progress through the gendarme’s mind as death overtakes him… …and then back to our previously scheduled denouement. [/spoiler] Incredibly poignant. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/45 "2012-10-18T14:52:56Z")
I have to give a shoutout to **awldune** upthread and say Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web. The words used to describe her death are just so poignant: > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by E.B. White > Next day, as the Ferris wheel was taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of all the hundreds of people that had visited the fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/46 "2012-10-18T16:02:13Z")
Does it count if it’s just the way I’d want to go? If so, Lenny in _Of Mice and Men_. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/47 "2012-10-18T17:31:01Z")
> [@shantih](#): > > I have to give a shoutout to **awldune** upthread and say Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web… NPR just this week had a feature about White recording portions of the book and getting choked up, time after time after time, when he got to the part about Charlotte’s death. ---
**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/48 "2012-10-18T17:48:21Z")
I’ll go with a classic and say Beth’s death in _Little Women_. It always got me. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/49 "2012-10-18T20:44:16Z")
> [@Johnny\_Q](#): > > Bobby Shaftoe’s death in _Cryptonomicon_ could count. His death pissed me off. He was a survivor and it just seems to me that he gave up when he still had a good chance to make it out. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/50 "2012-10-18T20:54:02Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > His death pissed me off. He was a survivor and it just seems to me that he gave up when he still had a good chance to make it out. Agreed. It’s in my long list of reasons that Neal Stephenson’s endings suck. ---
**Author:** ![Stormcrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/0ea827/32.png) [@Stormcrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormcrow)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/51 "2012-10-18T20:57:57Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > His death pissed me off. He was a survivor and it just seems to me that he gave up when he still had a good chance to make it out. Bobby was utterly broken by that point. I have no doubt he could have put himself on autopilot and made it out alive, but having Glory taken from (for all intents and purposes) and then finding out that his son was healthy and alive gave him the sense that he could let go. No friend of Enoch Root dies unless they _want_ to… ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/52 "2012-10-18T21:17:26Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > I may be the only person in the entire world who’s ever felt this, but Javert’s death in _Les Miserables_. If he’d been just _that_ much less rigid, a tiny bit more flexible in his morality, he could have lived. Because his death was almost entirely caused by the cognitive dissonance of a convicted criminal who had a deep morality that happened to not quite jibe with the law, but that demonstrated Christian beliefs more than the law did. Javert couldn’t live in a world that contained such a contradiction (to him). I totally agree. And I’ve always loved the way Hugo’s villains aren’t inherently evil, but more like flawed heroes or worthy adversaries. But I have to mention a scene from \*Atlas Shrugged. \*It’s the railroad tunnel tragedy. Rand listed several passengers on the train, and how, in some way, they were actually responsible for the accident and their own deaths. It’s arguably the most “disturbing” scene she ever wrote. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/53 "2012-10-19T05:37:29Z")
> [@SeldomSeen](#): > > Joe Ben’s death in Ken Kesey’s "_Sometimes a Great Notion_"Anyway, one of the best most poignant and engrossing death scenes I know of. > SS Amen. > [@Dread\_Pirate\_Jimbo](#): > > The other death that really stuck with me all through the years was that of Snowden in “Catch-22.” Yes. > [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Chief suffocating McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest hasn’t been mentioned in this (hee-hee) zombie thread. Oh bloody hell, I’m in another zombie? Tough. I’m not backing out now. A strong “me too” for McMurphy’s mercy killing. (The film version is also one of the best in its genre.) The one that comes to my mind is a non-sympathetic character’s demise: the mountain man’s death by arrow in **Deliverance** is writing at its best. Edit: I feel better. It’s not a very old zombie. Still warm. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/54 "2012-10-19T10:21:26Z")
The death of Coth of the Rocks in James Branch Cabell’s “ **The Silver Stallion**.” Always gets me, especially knowing his personality. (The pathos of his death is not mitigated by his behaviour in Hell afterwards, when his son encounters him in “ **Jurgen**.”) ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2012, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879/55 "2012-10-20T06:45:19Z")
Another one for Snowden. And jeez, McWatt’s was incredible because you knew exactly what was going to happen- and it still got you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-death-scene-in-a-novel/566879.md?page=2)