That Man Is Dead / Literature

That Man Is Dead in literature.

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• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A variation: Captain Nemo's former persona is so dead, he never reveal who he was (at least before the Sequel), and he refers to himself as dead:
  "...I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends who are sleeping six feet under the earth!"
• Arc of Fire: Rahze says this about his past good self after turning evil.
• The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Near the end of the second book, Bartimaeus tries to reproach his young master for his slide into a borderline Knight Templar by saying, "You'll notice I'm calling you John Mandrake now... The boy who was Nathaniel's fading, almost gone." Unfortunately, Nathaniel John Mandrake entirely misses the point.
  • He gets it in the third, and abandons the name John Mandrake.
• Toward the end of Ellis Peters' The Leper of St. Giles, Brother Cadfael is talking to the man who killed Godfrid Picard in a duel, who he names "Guimar de Massard".
  Lazarus, once known as Guimar de Massard: Should I know that name?
• By Any Other Name (2013): Holly Latham, formerly known as Louisa Drummond, is a teenager starting a new life in Witness Protection. At first she feels like her new identity is a costume, but as the months go by she starts to feel that Louisa is gone and Holly has become a real person.
• Children of Dune: The Preacher, whose old identity is suspected by many characters but not confirmed until late in the book, states that "Paul Atreides is gone."
• The Children of Húrin and The Silmarillion both: Túrin goes under many covers, but when he chooses the name Turambar, it sticks, to a point where even the narrator uses it for most of his time in Brethil. Túrin himself invokes the trope when he insists that the men of Brethil are to forget his former names and is only to adress him as such. It goes for Níenor as well, who becomes Níniel after her former identity is erased by Glaurung. Only after the death of Glaurung, the narration goes back to Túrin´s original name.
• Codex Alera - In First Lord's Fury, this is how one character ultimately avoids being Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. In the epilogue, Octavian declares Fidelias ex Cursori dead, while making Fidelias's Secret Identity Valiar Marcus one of his top advisers, with the intent of getting as much use out of the former Cursor as he can.
  • Which is exactly what Gaius Sextus said should happen in Cursor's Fury.
• At the very end of the Coldfire Trilogy, this is the fate of Gerald Tarant. The altered rules of the fae mean that his new lease on life relies on both "the Hunter" and "Gerald Tarant" staying dead. The new guy can't acknowledge his past identities except in the most oblique terms.
• In The Count of Monte Cristo, after escaping from jail and finding the treasure of Monte Cristo, the protagonist declared that Edmond Dantes was 'dead', and he assumed his titular identity. The narration plays along, in the first half of the novel we follow Edmond Dantes through imprisonment, escape and finding his treasure where his actions are narrated such as "Edmond walked over to the the desk." Then he declares himself to be an avenging angel and that all mercy has left his soul, and we have a time-skip after which he starts following an unknown character (to the audience) who runs into the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, and from that moment on, even when he is in private, the narration goes "The Count walked over to the desk.". The Count's time in prison and on the high seas did a number on his appearance. The film adaptations use makeup tricks to put this across: blacking him up (suntan), having him go grey, and/or adding some facial hair. His Heel Realization and subsequent My God, What Have I Done? Heel–Face Turn at the end seems to give him some sort of balance between the two, as he in the final chapter signs his letter, and Testament, as "Edmond Dantes, The Count of Monte Cristo".
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Feyre declares that the girl she was in the first book died Beneath The Mountain. Literally in her case, seeing as she did die for a short while.
• In the The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids story The City of Peace, Dustin Rhodes renounces his former identity after Atoma declares that she hates him, becoming only "the Director".
  "Very well” he said theatrically. "Good-bye, forever, Atoma. My love for you transcended centuries… but nothing can pierce a callous, thankless heart. The purest passion dies on the harsh, rocky banks of insensitivity. So, good-bye, for with these words you have killed Dustin Rhodes, and we shall not meet again."
• Played with and subverted in The Dark Half when the main character has a mock photo shoot in front of the grave... of his alter-ego.
• Deepgate Codex: Serial murderer and assassin Carnival reacts very badly to her old name "Rebecca".
• In The Alchymist's Cat, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, during The Reveal that he is Will's uncle, Dr. Spittle proclaims "My name is Elias Theophrastus Spittle - I do not recognise that former life. I have ceased to be Samuel Godwin!"
• The Devourers: The titular werebeasts are created by "splitting" their souls into human and monster forms; they believe this to be their true birth, and the memories of their human lives to be no more significant than the Ghost Memories they gain from their victims. The Stranger outright tells his birth mother that her son died when he was born.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, after dying twice and Identity Amnesia, Karyl takes to saying this whenever someone inquires about the famous voyvod Karyl Bogomirskiy.
• Discworld: In Going Postal, Albert Spangler died, but Moist von Lipwig woke up in Vetinari's office. Moist never wanted to stop being Albert, but what can you do when an Angel presents himself? The stock phrase does crop up, though; when Vetinari causally points out that the money the gods left to Moist just happens to be equal to the estimated haul of a noted fraudster, Moist replies, "Albert Spangler is dead. I was there when they hanged him."
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe: In the novel The Face of the Enemy, the Master gets to use this on seeing an Alternate Universe version of himself who never turned evil: "In our universe, Koschei died, out on the galactic rim. Now there is only the Master."
• Eden Green has multiple characters infected and completely taken over by an alien needle symbiote; several react this way.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Corien loathes being called by his angelic name, Kalmaroth. He views that version of himself as an embarrassing failure and would love to forget that he was ushered into the Deep like the rest of his brethren.
• Esther Diamond: Played for Laughs with vampire actor and self-proclaimed actual vampire Daemon Ravel's efforts to distance himself from his birth identity.
• In Everworld, the witch Senna Wales abandoned her birth name when her mother left her, using "Senna" (which is a mispronunciation of her real name) as a way of separating herself from the "crying, lost little girl without her mother." She explictly thinks in the ninth book that, "That was all dead and buried now. Had been for a long time. I was me, I was Senna Wales."
• In El Filibusterismo, the follow-up to Jose Rizal's Noli me Tangere, Juan Crisostomo Ibarra returns to the Philippines under the name Simoun. The former goody-two shoes ilustrado is now a terrorist. Lovely.
• Garrett, P.I.: In Cold Copper Tears, Jill leaves Garrett a note insisting that he shouldn't go looking for her to protect her, as she's no longer the little girl (Hester) whom he'd known when they were neighbors. Ironically, she signs the note "Hester", and Garrett concludes that the note's very existence proves the little girl is still in there: her "Jill" persona wasn't the sort to even think of leaving him such a message.
• In Green Angel, fifteen-year-old Green suffers the loss of her parents and sister after they die in a huge explosion. She then renames herself Ash, chops off her black hair, and withdraws to her cottage except to restock on supplies. Much of the story is her journey of coming to terms with her grief and regaining her identity as Green.
• At the end of the final Harry Potter book, Harry starts calling Voldemort by his Muggle name Tom Riddle, at first to mock him, but later as a Last-Second Chance, and this unsurprisingly infuriates Voldemort.
  • This happens even earlier, in a scene Harry sees in the Pensive in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore calls Voldemort "Tom", and continues to do so even after Voldemort tries to convince him to call him Voldemort.
• In Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series, Tayledras use-names reflect the owner. When something happens that drastically changes the personality of a Tayledras they change their use-name, indicating that they see themselves as a new/different person. This is how Songwind became Darkwind.
• In I Did Not Give That Spider Super Human Intelligence, a prequel book in the Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain series, Irene tries to refer to the Mourning Dove as Bluejay a few times after she is zombified. She doesn't like it. As far as she's concerned, she is no longer Bluejay after what the Bad Doctor did to her.
• Imperial Radch: In Ancillary Sword, Breq says this about Lieutenant Tisarwat, after removing the implants Anaander Mianaai used to assimilate her.
• In The Invisible Man, the title character starts referring to himself as Invisible Man The First, instead of Griffin.
• In "Invisible Monsters", Shane fakes his own death, and pretends to be a trans woman to assume a new identity as "Brandy".
• In Labyrinths of Echo Shurf Lonli-Lokli deliberately adopts his present persona, and takes great pains to truly Become The Mask in order to mislead the vengeful ghosts of the people his younger, wilder self killed.
• Lord of the Flies: Implied when Percival Wemys Madison ("of the Vicarage, Harcourt St Anthony, Hants, telephone, telephone, tele- …"), who has made of his name and address his Survival Mantra and has been repeating it through the traumatic events of the novel, forgets it exactly at the moment he meets someone who can really help him.
• What Mal'Akh, the villain of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, Zachary Solomon does to Simon. He reveals he is, in fact, Simon's son who was so enraged by his father abandoning him that he feigned death, escaped a Turkish prison and became a tattoo'd Chessmaster Magnificent Bastard with a thing for Godhood.
• In Mirror Project, Bill tries to revive his dead wife, Lynn, with Brain Uploading. However, the resulting entity is a mixture of Lynn's original mind and computer-generated code that identifies as a separate being, and tells Bill that the original Lynn is dead.
• Musketeer Space has a full chapter entitled The Comte de la Fere Is A Ghost Story. Athos the Musketeer, older, cynical and an alcoholic, opens the story of his past life with "He's dead, and good riddance."
• Night: He doesn't take a new name, but Eliezer describes his spiritual hardening in these terms after he watches a cart dump children into a firepit. He's lucky enough to be spared, but ""[T]he student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me."
• October Daye: In "Rat-Catcher", Rand, Prince of Cats, renames himself Tybalt when he kills his father to become the new King of Cats.
  The night-haunts could not come for that simple Prince. He died in darkness all the same. I had become a King of Cats, and buried the Prince in shadows.
• This happens to all the Epics in The Reckoners Trilogy, as Epic powers turn people apathetic and uncaring to the consequences of their actions, so they kill when they're annoyed. Best shown in Firefight with Prof, the leader of the Reckoners when he overuses his powers.
• In the Redwall novel Taggerung, by the end of the story, the Taggerung doesn't really go by that name much anymore.
• Red Moon Rising (Holt): Rae and Temple are renamed Mayrikafsa and Kalashava, and eventually stop referring to themselves by their old names. Kalashava actively insists that her name is no longer Temple.
• O. Henry's short story "A Retrieved Reformation" uses something like this, although for a Heel–Face Turn. Jimmy Valentine is a Gentleman Thief who starts the story as a Falsely Reformed Villain and is being pursued by a detective. He creates another identity, Ralph Simpson, initially so he can rob a bank, but then bumps into and falls in love with the daughter of the bank's owner, leading to his reformation. At the end, he exposes himself in front of the detective by breaking into a safe in which a little girl had become trapped. He goes to willingly turn himself in, but the detective, seeing he has changed, refers to him as Mr. Simpson and lets him go, pretending not to recognize him.
  • But also facing the bank president, his daughter, and all the townsfolk who just watched "Ralph Simpson" pop an unbreakable safe...
• The Reynard Cycle: Isengrim invokes this, referring to his past life as one of the Blood-Guard, the State Sec of Calvaria.
• Scavenge the Stars: Boon has left his life as Aran Chandra behind, and even refuses to be called that anymore. He even uses a intentional vague wording from From a Certain Point of View to make it seem to his daughter that he killed Chandra.
• In the backstory of Shadow of the Conqueror, Dayless the Conqueror considered his younger, nobler self to have died the day his family did, and did his best to bury him forever. In the present day, Daylen Namaran is doing his best to dig that man back up and put Dayless in the ground, instead.
• The title character of The Sheik did this after rejecting his English heritage and disowning his father:
  A letter that Lord Glencaryll wrote to him, addressed to Viscount Caryll, which is, of course, his courtesy title, begging for at least an interview, and which he gave to us to forward, was returned unopened, and scrawled across the envelope: "Inconnu. Ahmed Ben Hassan."
• Inej Ghafa in Six of Crows considers herself to have “died in the hold of a slaver ship,” meaning that she sees herself as no longer the same innocent young girl she was before being kidnapped at the age of 14.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Theon Greyjoy aka Reek has a nervous breakdown when Roose Bolton refers to him by his previous identity.
  Reek: I'm not the Turncloak, I'm not him! He died at Winterfell! My name is Reek, it rhymes with freak!
  • The Elder Brother of the monks on the Quiet Isle says this about the Hound; it's strongly implied that Sandor Clegane is still alive, but no longer the Hound, having left the life of violence (and his dog's head helm) behind and become one of the monks.
• Bubba, in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries hates being called by his real name, Elvis. It seems to have something to do with the brain damage he suffered in the transition from human to vampire, and he freaks out at any reminder of his former life.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible: Doctor Impossible says in his narration "I'm Doctor Impossible nearly all the time now." When he meets Lily, she calls him "Jonathan". When they meet again after he defeats the heroes he demands she call him Doctor Impossible.
• Wol in Star Trek: Klingon Empire. Wol's previous identity was Eral, a noble woman. When she came of age, her parents had Eral betrothed in order to forge an alliance with another house. Eral, however, became pregnant with the child of a servant, whom she loved. She was banished from her house, as her father could not bring himself to kill her (as honor would have dictated). Her lover, however, was executed, and her child taken away. She became Wol, a common soldier, and embraced it. Eral is pretty much dead and gone.
  • A mistake by the author, as Klingon philosophy emphasizes fighting to shape one's own destiny. Honour from duty and loyalty is only a factor when a Klingon chooses to join the military to serve the empire.
• Inverted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Vendetta:
  Vastator of Borg: You are a special case, Locutus.
  Picard: Locutus is dead!
• Star Wars Legends: In the X-Wing Series, Dia says "She's dead. Dia. Diap'assik. She is dead. She would not have done that. She would not have shot him. She would have died first. She is dead, Face." after she pulled a Shoot Your Mate. He was - probably - already dead. In an interesting version of this trope, Dia had previously called herself Dia Passik and was very hard, very bitter after being enslaved. Diap'assik was her name as a child. The seemingly tiny difference in the names is very significant in the Twi'lek language: while it's normal for Twi'leks to split their given and family names when dealing with other species, among themselves only the most dishonored outcasts are referred to in that manner. This shows that Dia thought of herself as a dishonored outcast, even though the rest of Twi'lek society didn't. Turns out she's not dead, and this is her moment of defrosting.
  Gara Petothel is dead. Lara Notsil is dead. I will answer to those names, but they are no longer mine. I am Kirney Slane. I have no life yet. I will make one, or I will die in the attempt.
• Symphony of Ages: In Destiny, Rhapsody is angsting over having people that Llauron the Invoker is dead when he's actually still alive. (Her powers derive from telling the truth and only the truth. Telling a lie makes her lose her powers.) One of her friends tells her that if she had used Llauron's full name, she would have been lying, but since she only used his title, technically, she didn't tell a lie, because Llauron the Invoker is dead because he's no longer the Invoker.
• This happened to Scar from The Lion King (1994) according to the book A Tale Of Two Brothers. His name was originally "Taka" however after gaining his scar, due to an accident where he tried to frame his older brother Mufasa, he decided to change his name.
  Scar: From now on, call me Scar. Father, I won't forget what happened today. I promise.
• In This Immortal, Conrad changes his names with his identities and proclaims his former personas dead. When confronted with the possibility of him being Konstantin Karaghiosis, he denies it, saying Karaghiosis is dead. But even after he admits to Diane that yes, he is — or used to be — Karaghiosis, he makes it clear that man is dead and he now is Conrad Nomikos.
• Paradise: In Steven Layne's This Side of Paradise (not the one by F. Scott Fitzgerald), Jack recognizes when his father has become his split personality Mr. Eden, completely consumed by his Utopia Justifies The Means mindset, for good, with the line "My father was gone, and nothing could bring him back."
• The Traitor Son Cycle: After his Face–Heel Turn, Kevin Orley abandons his old name and says that the old him is dead - punctuating it by murdering his travelling companions.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Exalted, Capitan of the warband which was once the 10th company of the Night Lords, tends to lash out at the nearest bridge officer whenever anyone addresses him by his pre-possession name of Vandread.
• Warrior Cats: In the novella Mothwing's Secret, after Hawkfrost's death, his sister Mothwing grieves not for Hawkfrost, the manipulative villain he had become, but Hawk, the innocent brother he used to be.
• Westmark: In The Beggar Queen, the main character, Theo, is asked by the revolutionary leader Florian to make sure that the capital city will accept him as a leader when he returns from a journey. Theo refuses, and Florian says, "I'm not asking you, I'm asking Kestrel," referring to Theo's alias in the previous book. Theo responds with "Kestrel's dead. He died in the war, from the stink of too much blood."
• The Wheel of Time: In ''The Shadow Rising, Asmodean pleads with his former co-conspirator and current betrayer Lanfear:
  Asmodean: You cannot do this to me! Please, Mierin! Please!
  Lanfear: My name is Lanfear!
• The Wicked Years:
  • Wicked: Galinda changes her name to Glinda in memory of her teacher Dr. Dillamond (who would mispronounce her name as "Glinda").
  • In A Lion Among Men, after a pivotal scene, Ilianora is revealed to be Nor Tigelaar, but when asked, she says that Nor died in Southstairs, and she's now Ilianora.
• The Young Diana: After Diana leaves her horrible parents and moves to Switzerland, she starts to feel this way about the Diana of a few months ago, the lonely spinster who could never stand up to her parents. Later, after the youth potion changes both her appearance and personality to be almost unrecognizable, she declares that the middle-aged Diana is dead.
• In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the narrator says that Phaedrus is gone, killed by electric shock, and he seems to legitimately believe it. Unlike most examples, the narrator gives his ex-personality a different name than his own (which is not revealed).

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