Follow TV Tropes

Following

Sadistic Choice / Literature

Go To


  • 1Q84: Aomame can either kill the Leader of Sakigake, causing the Little People to lose any interest in Tengo but result in Sakigake coming after her; or she can let Leader live, in which case the Little People will arrange Tengo's death. Aomame can't imagine a world in which she lives but Tengo dies, so she follows through with the original plan of murdering Leader.
  • Kurt Vonnegut's short story "All the King's Horses" has U.S. Army Colonel, Bryan Kelly, whose plane has been shot down in the Asiatic mainland. With him are his two sons, his wife, the pilot and co-pilot, and ten enlisted men. The sixteen prisoners are held captive by the Chinese officer Pi Ying, who forces Kelly to play a game of chess using his family and men as the pieces. If he can defeat Pi Ying in the battle of wits, then the sixteen captives are free to go, except there is one catch: every American piece who is captured will be executed immediately. This leads to a moral dilemma for Kelly as he is forced to make decisions with the lives of everyone hanging in balance. At the climax of the story, the end position is one in which Kelly has one of two moves that will assure victory, while every other move will result in defeat. The problem is that the two moves that will assure victory require Kelly to sacrifice one of his two sons. Luckily for him, Pi Ying is murdered by a concubine before ordering the child's death, and the remaining Americans, including both of the twins, are spared.
  • In Animorphs novel "The Ellimist Chronicles", Crayak presents the Ellimist with three inhabited planets. Each planet has an enormous asteroid hurtling towards it. One asteroid is laced with explosives such that it will self-destruct before reaching its planet. The Ellimist can only destroy one asteroid (and thus can only save one sentient species). Which does he save? Which world would Crayak have chosen to save in advance? If the Ellimist chooses the mined asteroid, he's wasted his shot and two worlds die. If he chooses correctly...one world dies. Crayak does this to him a lot until the Ellimist finally gets too beaten down to play the game any more. Then he realizes his mistake was playing on Crayak's terms in the first place, and just starts seeding life on every world he can find.
  • Apprentice Adept:
    • In the second book, Blue Adept, Stile's oath friend Neysa the unicorn received an official summons to rejoin the herd for breeding season - something Neysa had been previously excluded from because of her small size and horse-normal coloration. But she had already pledged herself to Stile's cause (Who killed Stile's other self, the previous Blue Adept, and was trying to kill him). Either she answered the summons, leaving her oath friend without her help and protection or she defied the summons, risking going from "herd outcast" to "herd exile." When Stile intervened on her behalf, that generated a choice for Stile:
    • The Herd Stallion agreed to settle Neysa's case via Trial by Combat within a unicorn circlenote . But in the time before the trial was to take place, Stile gained possession of the Platinum Flute, an artifact that could boost his power to the point where even a unicorn circle couldn't suppress it. This left the honorable Stile with two equally unpalatable options: Fight without the flute and get humiliated (The Stallion's true goal) or use the flute and humiliate the Stallion (potentially making a powerful enemy of the Stallion and making things even harder on Neysa in the long run). Thanks to some advice from a vampire elder, Stile managed to Take a Third Option.note 
  • In Mikhail Akhmanov's Arrivals from the Dark: The Gates of the Galaxy, the Mark Valdez is one of the twelve Arbiters of Justice, whose duties include mediating inter-species disputes. They are trusted as always making the moral and just choice, even if it's not in humanity's favor. Earth has been at war with the Dromi for over 50 years with millions dead on both sides. Humans get a chance to end the war in one fell swoop by taking out the Dromi homeworld. They use a Portal Network to get to the Dromi system without detection and proceed to depopulate one of their worlds before moving on to the homeworld. However, the Dromi figure out what's going on and land all orbital hatcheries on the planet, hoping that the humans won't harm "children". While the fleet officers claim that the Dromi larvae are not children (they're non-sentient), Mark realizes he has no choice but to abort the mission, even if his own daughter has to join the fight. The epilogue states that the war goes on for another century. It's heavily implied to be a Secret Test of Character for humanity at large by those seeking to make humans the stewards of the galaxy. Humanity passed.
  • Artemis Fowl: Opal Koboi gives one to Holly in the fourth book, forcing her to choose between saving Commander Root and Artemis. She then compounds the sadism by offering Holly a false third option. And to add more insult to injury, Opal didn't give Holly enough time to save Artemis even if Holly had left immediately.
  • Beautiful Creatures: One is offered to Lena near the climax: Choose the Light, and every Dark Caster in the family dies, never to harm anyone ever again — but Macon will die as well, and Lena will never be able to have a physical relationship with Ethan. Choose the Dark, and every Light Caster in the family dies — but Macon will survive, and Lena will be given the means to be together with Ethan physically and emotionally.
  • In Stephen King's The Dark Tower, the Man in Black presents Roland with a series of sadistic choices, most importantly at the end of The Gunslinger, when he gives him a major Friend-or-Idol Decision.note 
  • The Devil's Alternative is a novel by Frederick Forsyth in which the president of the United States is forced to do this.
  • In the Discworld series, making these sort of decisions is part of being a witch. In Carpe Jugulum, Granny Weatherwax makes an emergency visit to a very pregnant young woman who's been kicked by a cow, a situation the local midwife can't handle on her own. Death is in the background while Granny's working, and suggests that one life might be saved, but it'll be up to Granny to decide which one. She ultimately saves the young mother, since she'll be able to recover and have more children in the future, and Death is decent enough to take the other soul and leave without a word. Afterward, the local midwife suggests that Granny should have asked the husband which one to save.
    "You don't like him? You think he's a bad man?" said Granny, adjusting her hat pins.
    "No!"
    "Then what has he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?"
  • In the Frederick Forsyth novel The Devils Alternative, set during the Cold War, terrorists have taken an oil tanker hostage, demanding two of their comrades be released from prison. If they don't get released from prison, the terrorists will let the oil tanker leak into the Mediterranean Sea, causing millions of dollars of environmental damage that will affect all of the countries bordering the sea. If the men do get released from prison, this will cause the current Soviet premiere to back out of an arms treaty with the U.S., which will also cause him to be toppled, and his successor will invade the rest of Europe, leading to World War III. (not helped by the fact the two prisoners will reveal they murdered the head of the KGB, which will also cause the Soviet premiere to be overthrown). The President of the United States has planned to Take a Third Option destroy the tanker before it can cause any damage, but Adam Munro, a British agent, comes up with a better option - have the prisoners released, but have them killed with a time-delayed capsule before they can broadcast to the world what they've done, which keeps the terrorists from emptying oil from the tanker while also keeping the Soviet premiere, and the arms agreement, in place.
  • In the Dresden Files novel "Grave Peril", Harry is faced with one of these. Should he rescue Susan and, in doing so, start a full-on war with the Red Court due to violating Sacred Hospitality? Or, do nothing and also allow the destruction of one of the three Swords of the Cross? Harry weighs the choices and decides to save Susan because he believes he has to do what's right, even though the consequences of his choice ripple onward for many novels.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: After getting fed up with Eliana's continued rebellion, Corien makes her choose between saving her brother or saving her still-alive father from a fall to their deaths. She can't use her powers to save them both for he'll kill them anyway if she tries. She saves Remy.
  • Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Rong Bai's father tells him to either kill Song Ci or be punished for refusing. Rong Bai chooses the puishment.
  • In Frostbite, Isaiah the Strigoi gave his captive Moroi, Christian Ozera and Mia Rinaldi, a sadistic choice. They could starve to death or drain the blood of their dhampir friends and turn into a strigoi. In addition the one who chose this path condemned the other Moroi to death.
  • In the Guild Wars 2 prequel novel Edge of Destiny, Logan Thackeray has to choose between staying with his band of adventurers to fight the Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik, or leaving to save Queen Jennah. He chooses the latter — and with his departure, dooms the fight against Kralkatorrik, resulting in the dragon's escape, the death of one of his comrades, and general fallout and bickering in the group for years to come.
  • The Heroes of Olympus:
    • In the second excerpt of Son of Neptune, "June" (Juno) tells Percy that he can endure suffering and tragedy and maybe save his friends, or live happily under the ocean while the world ends.
    • Jason and Percy become possessed by ghosts and attack each other. Piper is ordered to decide which one will survive. Also keeps with the History Repeats theme of the series, as Hercules/Heracles was offered essentially the same choice.
    • Several characters outright state that Percy's gonna have to make another one sometime in the future, but likely won't be able to, due to his fatal flaw: loyalty to his friends above all else.
  • Hexwood: At the culmination of his Training from Hell, Mordion is given the choice between killing his final remaining classmate — whom he loved like another self — or allow her to be tortured for a year in a way worse than anything a trained assassin could imagine. He takes the first option. It wasn't a hard choice.
    • His master then explains to him that he will face this choice every time he is ordered to kill someone: either he kills them immediately, usually as painlessly as he likes, or the master will take this revenge. Thus completing the transformation of a fundamentally gentle man into a remorseless killer.
  • In the short story "The Lady, or the Tiger?" by Frank R. Stockton, the king's "justice" system consists of bringing the defendants into a public arena and making them choose between two doors, one of which has a beautiful woman behind it and the other a vicious tiger. In this particular instance, the criminal was having an affair with the princess, who knows which door is which. She gives him a tiny signal and he opens the door without hesitation... but the story doesn't tell us which one it was. A further complication is that the woman is one whom the princess believes is the third leg in a Love Triangle with herself and her lover, so she really doesn't want either option. Stockton presents it as a question for the reader to answer: did the princess give her man up to a romantic rival whom she deeply loathed with all her being, or did she send him to a horrific demise?
  • In one of the Legend Of The Five Rings official stories, Dragon Clan champion Togashi Satsu was captured by the mad monk Kokujin and asked which of his two followers would be sacrificed. Satsu initially offers himself but Kokujin refuses saying he'd kill both of Satsu's followers if he didn't make a choice. Once the choice gets made, Kokujin starts preparing the other guy.
  • Les Misérables: When Jean Valjean learns that another man has been mistakenly arrested in his place, he has to choose whether to stay silent and let an innocent man spend the rest of his life in the hellish galleys, or confess his identity and not only go back there himself, but let the factory he owns be closed, the entire town fall to ruin as a result, Fantine die without ever seeing her daughter Cosette again, and little Cosette be left at the mercy of the villainous Thénardiers. He ultimately chooses to confess and free the innocent man, but while he's unable to save the factory or Fantine, he does manage to escape from prison and save Cosette.
  • Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined: At the end of the book, Beau is bitten by a vampire and his transformation is irreversible. He now has to choose between dying on the spot or continue turning into a vampire.
  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Crippled God is poisoning Burn, the incarnation of existence, in Memories of Ice. He hopes that, in order to stop him, someone is going to free him from his chains, thereby releasing him from his long imprisonment — which would mean that he is free to roam the world as he wishes and end civilisation as they know it. If no one frees him, then Burn's poisoning will mean the slow death of the entire world.
  • Market of Monsters:
    • Not Even Bones: To teach Nita who's in charge, Reyes tells her she can either turn her pain receptors on and let Kovit torture her for an hour, or let him cut off three of her fingers.
    • Only Ashes Remain: Kovit is devoted to both his father-figure Henry and his... well, at this point, friend Nita. Henry manages to capture Nita with the goal of killing her and selling her body. Which Conflicting Loyalty will win out...?
  • In More Than This, the prisoner made Seth choose who (out of him and his brother) was to be taken as hostage.
  • In The Mote in God's Eye, Whitbread realizes he faces the choice between the sin of committing suicide and capture, which risks his knowledge falling into Motie hands and endangering the human race.
  • The New Heroes novel Sakkara plays this terrifyingly straight, to one of the teenage heroes, with no third choice. In a young adults novel.
  • In the New Jedi Order novel 'Star by Star', the three Solo kids are captured by the Yuuzhan Vong and they keep pushing Jaina to choose which of her brothers will be tortured. Anakin ends up telling her he can withstand it, though he ultimately gives his life helping others escape.
  • Nightfall (Series): Myra has to choose if to help Vladimir capture Bastien. If she refuses, Serena will die and Myra will lose her chance to get information on the Weather Wizard. If she agrees, she needs to lie to Serena, Bastien will die, and the Farm humans will lose all hope that they can escape.
  • The Oleander Sword: Priya is given the choice of stabbing her lover Malini or the yaksa Mani Ara will kill all her other loved ones. She stabs Malini, grateful that it isn't fatal, with the utmost reluctance.
  • In One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Poirot is forced to choose between uncovering the truth and arresting someone who, aside from their crime of murder, is a perfectly pleasant and unassuming person who stood for Poirot's own ideals and a man of great political influence whose removal may lead to national instability and political unrest, or keep silent and let the scapegoat, an insignificant figure who represents everything Poirot hates and whom he considers a waste of space the country can do without, go to the gallows. He has the actual murderer arrested.
  • Every citizen of the titular False Utopia in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is presented with a choice: either reap the rewards of the system with full knowledge of what is being done to sustain it, or reject it and leave for untamed, if greener pastures.
  • “Cutting all of a man’s fingers off aint hurt half as much as asking him which.” From the Pareidolia and the Gilded Scar story Domestication
  • A perfect example is in Pawn in Frankincense, the fourth book in Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. Lymond is forced in a game of Human Chess to choose between two small children, one of whom is his own son and one who is the villain's son, without knowing which is which. He tries every possible Take a Third Option (bribery, self-sacrifice, escape) but the writer doesn't cop out. Lymond chooses to kill the one he believes to be his own son; fans still debate why and whether he was right.
  • In The Pillars of the Earth:
    • Once the Hamleighs have captured Aliena's castle her stiff-necked father refuses to kneel in submission, so Lady Regan orders that Aliena's ears be cut off if he does not submit.
    • William gives Aliena a choice between lying still as he rapes her and watching her brother's ear get cut off.
  • The Radix: Brynstone encounters this during his showdown with Erich Metzger. He has Radix, and there are two people who want it. One is holding his daughter hostage, another has his wife. Both try to reason why he should save one, and let the other die.
  • In Stephen King's short story, Riding the Bullet, the protagonist has to make a decision: either him, or his mother will die soon. He saves himself and chooses his mother. She doesn't die, but she still knows that his choice was to let her die.
  • In The Roman Mysteries Nubia has to choice between freeing her brother and her freeing her friend from slavery.
  • Sano Ichiro: Poor, poor Lady Nobuko. Two men are vying for control of Japan after her husband's death; one had her kidnapped and raped to discredit his rival, the other was behind the plot that caused the death of her only child. After the shogun dies, she's confronted with a chance to inflict revenge on either Yanagisawa or Ienobu. She snaps, unable to kill or take sides with one lest the other rise to power.
  • Chauvelin is notorious for his merciless "either...or" ultimatums in The Scarlet Pimpernel and its sequels. His first target is Marguerite Blakeney, who has to choose between helping Chauvelin arrest and execute the Scarlet Pimpernel (aka her husband) or letting him arrest and behead her brother. Thereafter, Chauvelin usually holds Marguerite as the hostage and gives the choice to Sir Percy Blakeney — for example, in The Elusive Pimpernel, he threatens to kill the breadwinner in every family in Bologne if Sir Percy tries to rescue his wife.
  • In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf, disguised as Detective Dupin, allows the children to choose which one of them makes a 'lucky' escape.
    • In the last book, he offers to answer all of their questions about VFD, but only if they let him out of prison. They refuse.
  • In the young adult Dark Future novel Smart Rats, the teen protagonist must choose whether to silence his mentally-disturbed little sister, or leave her alive to prattle lies that could get his entire family tortured and executed by the secret police. He takes her swimming, and "fails to hear" her struggling in the water.
  • George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Near the end of A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark is forced to make a decision: expose the Lannisters' scheming, die, and leave his daughter Sansa at their mercy, or confess to false charges, be disgraced but save Sansa, and fight for another day? He chooses the latter. Except Joffrey Baratheon decides to become The Caligula at the worst possible moment by executing Ned, starting the War of the Five Kings.
    • A particularly sadistic variant happens in the novella The Princess and the Queen. A pair of assassins, Blood and Cheese, who were hired by Daemon Targaryen to carry out a revenge killing, demand that his niece, Helaena, choose which of her two sons, Jaehaerys and Maelor, will be killed, with Cheese hinting that if she doesn't choose quickly, Blood will rape her young daughter, Jaehaera, out of boredom. When she picks Maelor to die, Blood tells the boy his mother wants him dead, then murders Jaehaerys instead.
  • Sophie's Choice by William Styron. (See Film.)
  • In Diane Duane's novel Spock's World, the Big Bad sways Vulcan towards secession in order to force Spock to make one of these — his planet or his ship?
  • In Drew Karpyshyn's Star Wars: The Old Republic: Annihilation, a joint SIS-Jedi-Army operation results in the Republic getting their hands on a Black Cypher, a Sith decoder used to send secure messages between the Sith leadership and their capital ships. This is used as part of the mission to take out the latest Sith superweapon — the destroyer Ascendant Spear, which can singlehandedly destroy entire Republic fleets. While the joint team is preparing to infiltrate the destroyer to sabotage its systems in order to cripple it in preparation for an ambush, the Republic intercepts a message using the Black Cypher indicating a number of attacks on key worlds deep in Republic space. They decide to allow the attacks to take place, secretly dispatching relief ships for after the attacks. Why? Because if even one attack is averted, the Sith will know their messages are being intercepted and will reprogram all their Black Cyphers, and the Ascendant Spear will continue to wreak havoc on the Republic. The protagonist decides to try to avert one such attack without compromising the mission.
  • Sword of Truth:
    • In the first book, Wizard's First Rule, the plot revolves around the three Boxes of Orden, which can be opened by a special ritual with different results depending on which one you open: one makes you omnipotent, one kills you, and one kills everyone in the entire world. Richard is the only one who knows which box is which. Towards the end, Darken Rahl informs him that he's managed to identify the box that kills him, so on a particular day he is going to open one of the others at random. Richard can either let it be an even toss between Rahl winning and the end of the world, or tell him which Box is the right one and thus ensure Rahl's victory. Richard of course finds a way to trick Rahl into choosing the Box that will kill him anyway.
    • In the second book, The Stone of Tears, Kahlan encounters a man who had just tried to kill her hanging from a ledge, about to fall to his death. She gives him the choice of taking her hand and living the rest of his life as an essentially brainwashed slave, or falling to his death. He chooses the latter.
  • Invoked in the Thursday Next series, when in First Among Sequels, Thursday is dropped into the Book World and ends up on a boat where sadistic choices occur non-stop. They have to rescue some shipwreck survivors who are carrying a contagious disease, there's only enough food for half of the passengers, etc. Thursday keeps making choices to stall for time before eventually leaving the boat in a lifeboat, reasoning that the choices occur because she is somewhere in the Oral Tradition, and they'll stop once there is no one to make them. However, in this case Taking a Third Option may result in the actual speaker in the real world suffering an aneurysm (which makes the third option itself a Sadistic Choice).
  • Time Scout: Here's your choice, assassin, you can stay here in downtime London where they'll lop your damaged hands off, or you can come home with us and receive the best of modern care and tell us all about your criminal bosses.
  • Togetherly Long: When the evil Emperor Von Mal seriously injures Oukii in a duel, he offers Chiisai a deal: If she'll join his side as his slave, then he'll heal Oukii's injuries and save his life. Chiisai has to choose whether to let her best friend die, or to betray what it means to be a hero by joining the bad guys.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • The Children of Húrin, Túrin is given the choice by Glaurung the dragon to either save his sort-of Love Interest Finduilas, who has just been dragged off by orcs, or his sister and mother who are currently suffering under the torment of the Easterlings. Túrin chooses his family. It turns out that the whole thing was a lie by Glaurung; Túrin's family were actually safe, having fled the Easterlings a while back, and when Túrin realises this it is too late to save Finduilas, who is murdered by her captors.
    • The Fall of Númenor: When Meneldur receives the letter from King Gil-Galad, begging for help to battle Morgoth's remaining evil in the name of the ancient alliance between Elves and Men, the Númenorean king finds himself in a no-win situation: he'll send help in the form of commanders who will intend to boost their fame and wealth by killing people; or he will refuse get involved and let people die to keep his own hands clean? Meneldur doesn't want to choose between two evils, so he decides to offer the crown to his son so that Aldarion deals with the situation as he sees fit.
  • In Underdogs, fourteen-year-old assassin Oliver Roth once captured Val and David Riley, the only married Underdogs, and gave them a choice: he could kill both of them slowly, or Val could stab her husband to death, and then he'd kill her quickly. Val chose the second option.
  • In Under the Yoke, a character suffers flashbacks to a Draka brainwashing technique that was used on him: being given control of the switch that directed current into one of two electric chairs, he being sat in one and his father in the other, so that he could only save his own life by committing patricide.
  • Dean Koontz's Velocity revolves around this concept. Throughout the novel, protagonist Billy Wiles is sent notes from an unknown serial killer offering him two choices, both of which will cause the killer to kill someone, the victim being determined by the choice Billy makes. As the book continues, things get worse — the killer will kill the woman no matter what, the only question is whether or not Billy will say "Waste the bitch,": because if he doesn't, the woman will suffer needlessly.
  • Sara Douglass's Wayfarer Redemption sextet subverts this trope, in-universe and out. Hero DragonStar has the choice to save Faraday, the woman he loves (who in a previous life died this way) or Katie, a little girl who supposedly holds the key to victory against ultimate evil. He chooses Katie to die (against Faraday's protestations), but Big Bad Qeteb — who'd been itching to slit Katie's throat for the whole novel — discovers almost immediately afterwards that he's played straight into the hands of destiny by doing so and is now thoroughly fucked.
    • The only people for whom it plays straight are Qeteb and Faraday. Katie has always known exactly what has to happen and why. DragonStar has long since realised that she's not a weapon; she's a sacrifice... and saving her is pointless. It doesn't play straight for the astute reader who realises just before Katie dies that her final emotion (aside from stoic acceptance) is relief.
  • Wings of Fire: Queen Scarlet ordered Kestrel to kill one of her newly hatched children so that the other could live. She killed the male, who didn't have enough fire and was more likely to die anyway. Scarlet then changed her mind and ordered the female killed. Kestrel tried to escape with her daughter, but she had too much fire in her and burned her mother. Kestrel dropped her and Peril was left to grow up as Scarlet's pawn.
  • Would You Rather: Over 200 Absolutely Absurd Dilemmas to Ponder by Justin Heimburg capitalizes on this trope.


Top