I guess the quote above is what a literal death wish is. That would be an acceptance that life has an ending and you’re okay with that eventuality. Doesn’t sound like you’re wishing for death, which is how fiction tends to portray the term. Certainly sounds like a big shift in mentality.
So, I started thinking about this after watching an anime called ‘Bungo Stray Dogs’. The plot doesn’t matter for this topic since I want to focus on a character named Dazai. This guy is highly intelligent, fairly charming, and can negate the powers of others. He’s almost like a mentor to who I think is the main character. One of his biggest character traits is that he is a ‘suicide junkie’ and routinely tries to kill himself, which has others accusing him of having a death wish. They aren’t wrong.
Before I go further, I will explain why Dazai is like this. He is a character who wonders if there is any point in living. So, he tries to find a purpose, which started as an efficient killer for a mafia when he was younger. Now, he does this other thing where he wants to discover and experience the perfect death. Usually with a pretty girl who is willing to die as well and mean it. Always sounds like he would never go through with it because he doesn’t try to get himself killed in battle. I never really managed to fully wrap my head around this, which is why the death wish fascinated me.
Authors and readers have a lot of trouble with a character who wants to die. When writing it, we tend to make them highly depressed or even deranged. Living things have that built in fear of death, so we see the desire to die as a symptom of mental illness. An author may want readers to avoid connecting with these characters and see them as broken, so they try to push the personality to the dismal side of human nature. This can be done to the point where the character’s reasons for wanting to die are either lost in their actions or never revealed at all.
I would say that there’s a fear of going all in on a death wish character too. It’s fine if this translates to high action feats of heroism, which has the character survive or sacrifice themselves. The type of hero who ‘doesn’t care if they die as long as they save others or get the mission done’. This actually sounds closer to the real world death wish (acceptance) than the fiction one (desire for it) we tend to think of. Maybe this is why we find it easier to write this type of hero than the ones that truly want to do for no other reason than to cease living.
This might be why I found Dazai rather interesting. He kind of straddled the whole concept. He was okay with dying, but fought against it whenever it was forced upon him by an enemy. It was like the death wish was his way of controlling his existence. Maybe he was living the quote where he accepted death, but he was kind of going out of his way to find it during his downtime. There were moments where it really was played for dark comedy too, so that might have been a key factor. Still, it’s a staple of the character to try to die in his off-time, which is strange and seems unnatural.
Have I figured out how to write a death wish character? I don’t know. The version that has accepted that death is inevitable, but won’t go out of their way to die appeals to me. They will still fight to survive when their lives are threatened, but they know that their time will come. It sounds like a challenging balance to strike. One that many people might even relate to. I think I have a few characters in future books that I want to try this with too, so I should look more into it.
So, what do you think about the death wish concept? Both reality and fiction.
Legends of Windemere 
I think it’s a lot sexier when it’s fiction. As we get older – and I am pushing the stats – we all think about death. But don’t actively wish for it, just accept it will happen.
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I’m meeting more and more younger people who seem ready for it. At least they claim to be.
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That is NOT good to hear! Are we raising pessimists?
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Maybe fatalists. Considering you can’t get a house or easily pay bills with a college education level job, medical coverage barely covers stuff, and all the other horrors of the world, it isn’t surprising.
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I’m in that category, too. It will happen. I’ve accepted that, but I’m not hoping for it, nor looking forward to it. A neighbour of mine, a committed Christian, knows she’s going to heaven and is looking forward to dying, but is living her life while she has it.
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I can’t help thinking of a character in A Tale of Two Cities who seems like this. He actually dies though. He never seemed to be able to shift to a different perspective and even predicted that he would sink lower still. But he has a sense of how he can save someone else through his death.
I have a character who is at a low point and might be misunderstood as someone with a death wish. His family certainly thinks he has that. He takes chances that could get him killed. But I need to think about this a bit more.
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Never read that book. It’s interesting how we always think of these types as depressed too. In the anime I mentioned, the character was happy, positive, and a little hopeful.
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Well, that certainly is an interesting take. Terry Pratchett’s wizard, Rincewind, might fit that description. He always seems to meet Death in hilarious scenes.
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You mean he dies or meets the incarnation of death?
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He gets himself into situations where he’s about to die. Yes, Death is the incarnation of death. He’s been after Rincewind for a while now.
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Poor death will never meet his quota.
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Your post reminded me of the movie Bucket List. Although a comedy, these guys went on as if they were going to live forever. I think a story where a character accepts the fact that he is going to die could be pretty exciting in the way he faces danger. It would be with a nothing-to-lose attitude.
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That was a good movie. I think it can count towards this concept.
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😁
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That definition isn’t exactly what I think of as having a death wish. It seems more Taoist or Buddhist in its acceptance of death.
When I think of the term, it’s something other people say about the character, not what they say about themselves. So if someone keeps acting recklessly (driving while very drunk, starting fights, etc.) you can say they must have a death wish. And they probably don’t have a death wish, they just don’t believe things will go badly for them.
Interestingly, when I was writing my Minstrels of Skaythe series, the minstrels characters were committed to nonviolence. The more conventional characters thought they had a death wish because they didn’t become violent when provoked.
So maybe the perception of having a death wish is partly just about unexpected behaviors and reactions (especially when they seem risky) rather than literally wishing to die.
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Its interesting how ‘death wish’ is seen as something bestowed on someone instead of a self-proclamation. That makes it sound more like an insult than a mentality.
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This is somewhat of a theme in Once Upon a Time in the Swamp. (Sorry for the promo.) Mari is accepting of her own end, but wants to deliver some justice before it happens. She is mentally disturbed, and even has vivid PTSD dreams.
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That has to be hard to write. Did you research ptsd stuff?
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No. I just went with how she felt. It was never intended to be PTSD until after I wrote it, and it seemed to fit the mold. Not everyone dreams the same, so I was allowed some latitude.
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Makes sense.
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It’s an interesting concept to use in fiction. Also, I’m a fan of Bungo Stray Dogs and one thing to keep mind with it is that many of the characters are based on real people (famous authors) and the real Osamu Dazai did die by suicide (drowning).
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I thought they were based off literary works more than the authors.
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The characters are based off authors and the names of their gifts are from the works they’re known for.
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Got it. The anime got rather confusing with time jumps.
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It can be at times. If you want to learn more about the real-life references, this is a helpful link
https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/Real-life_References
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Thanks.
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