We have a strange distructive urge to imagine how we would cope without the people, objects or experiences we love. Writers do this in their novels in order to prepare them for the real thing.
This is André Brink’s thought on the signigicance of killing off a character for a novelist.
Brink, Sindiwe Magona (Beauty’s Gift) and Justin Cartwright (The Song Before it is Sung) spoke to Shaun Johnson (The Native Commissioner) about the death of characters at a session entitled “Sending them off Gracefully” during the Franschhoek Literary Festival.
Brink said the ending of a book symbolises death, whether you kill off a character or not. “But a story also does not necessarily end when the text stops, and that is reassuring.”
Magona agreed with Brink. Her new novel is aobut a woman who dies of AIDS. “Her death is an ending, but if the book does the work I want it to do, it will be a beginning.”
Cartwright said he killed off characters without thinking in the past, but now that he is getting older, he also takes it more seriously. He said it was the work of a writer to scrutinise all aspects of life…even death.
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