Too Good For This Sinful Earth / Literature

• Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. His presence inspires goodwill and faith in a way that can only be compared to christian allegory and the possibility of his untimely death removes the last emotional defenses of an already largely remorseful Ebenezer. Except that, at the end of the story, Scrooge's knowledge of the future allows him to prevent Tiny Tim's death.
  • Played straight with Scrooge's little sister Fan, his sole living relation based on mutual affection, whose Death by Childbirth is offscreen and only alluded to, but clearly instrumental in driving Scrooge to detach himself emotionally from the rest of the world. (We only think it's in the book because it's shown vividly in the 1951 Aleister Sim film).
• V. C. Andrews:
  • In the Casteel Series, Leigh (known as "Angel") suffers a tragic life and is eventually raped by her stepfather. She succumbs to Death by Childbirth at the tender age of just 14.
  • A variant in Celeste: the rather bratty and annoying Noble does not fit the usual image of this trope, but his mother certainly considers that he does, and when he dies suddenly she forces his twin sister, Celeste to dress as a boy and "replace" him.
• Almost literal in Awakened; Jack is killed by Darkness because Neferet needed to give Darkness a soul she could not taint (as payment for trapping Kalona's soul). Later, when Nyx appears to the crowd at Jack's funeral, she tells his boyfriend Damien that he is one of the happiest souls she's known.
• In Eddings's Belgariad series there is mentioned (very briefly) to be a member of the good guy army who is a young, brain-damaged lad with a transcendent musical talent, playing songs of exquisite beauty. He sits and plays one of the most lovely songs the world had ever heard during a battle and is killed by an enemy ignoring it. This is presented as an indication of how cruel war is.
• Georgiana, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark", had a birthmark on her cheek. When her Mad Scientist husband eventually removes it, she dies, going directly to heaven since she has no other flaws separating her from being an angel. At least, in this case, it is clear from the start that Georgiana and her husband Aylmer are allegorical figures rather than realistic human beings. Often mistaken on superficial readings as a Science Is Bad, the story actually deals with obsession and hubris; for modern readers, the story works as an allegory for the often-fatal obsession with cosmetic surgery.
• Subverted in the Brother Cadfael novel A Morbid Taste for Bones. In the end, the monks assume that this is what has happened to the beautiful and saintly Brother Columbanus. In fact, Columbanus was a murderer, and after his Karmic Death Cadfael fakes his assumption into Heaven to stop the other monks asking awkward questions.
• Invoked in A Brother's Price to explain why boy babies are so often stillborn. It is more likely to be due to environmental issues, but the characters have no idea and thus look for a supernatural explanation.
• Carrie: Tommy Ross is easily the nicest character in a story full of assholes, and he dies due to a bucket falling on his head. This happens in all the film adaptations as well, and in 2013, it's what ultimately sets Carrie off, even more than getting covered in blood.
• In The Castle in the Forest, Adolf Hitler's sweet youngest brother, Edmund, dies of an illness in childhood. His father takes it very hard.
• Roy Meritt from Daemon. In Freedom Loki/Gragg muses that his idealism and nobility were too far at odds with the nature of the world.
• Briana in The Dead And The Gone, a book about an asteroid hitting the moon. She gets adult-onset asthma due to the ash in the air from volcanoes. She never stops believing that her parents are alive, despite Alex and Julie's warnings and prays for everyone. One day, when the electricity comes back on, she goes down to their old basement apartment to write her parents a letter. As she is going back up, the power goes out and she dies in the elevator. Alex and Julie find her 3 days later.
• In Dragon Bones, this is averted with Ciarra. She's a Cute Mute, born that way, acts like a twelve-year-old although she's sixteen, doesn't like shoes, is the only one who can see the family ghost, and is the go-to option gods use when they need to take over someone to talk to the protagonists. Seems like she's in danger of becoming this trope, doesn't it? However, the longer she stays away from castle Hurog, with which something is seriously wrong the more she looks and acts her actual age of sixteen instead of twelve, and is in the middle of the novel seen being as much of a Little Miss Snarker as she can be, considering that she's mute.
• In Edith Pattou's East, the main character, Rose, was born to replace her dead older sister Elise, her mother's favorite child. In one of the sections, Rose narrates: "Mother was always telling me about Elise — how good she was, how she always did as she was told, how she stayed close by, and what a great help she was to Mother in the kitchen."
• David Eddings's Elenium series gave us a minor character named Sir Parasim, a young knight stated by the (male) main character to be beautiful, with a singing voice to match. The words "clear" and "pure" are used to describe him more than once. Turns out, he's the youngest of 12 knights destined to give their lives to help keep the Queen of the kingdom alive. You know the rest... This turn is heavily foreshadowed by Eddings, who has his characters actually discuss Parasim with language like "He's too good for this world" and "God will probably call him home very soon." It's actually a comfort to Sparhawk when he finds out (after the fact) that Parasim's death was in a good cause. What's especially notable in that this reveals more about the other characters than Sir Parasim himself. As old professionals, they've seen the good ones die young often enough to recognize the signs.
• In The Faerie Queene, The triplet sons of Agape are all doomed to short lives despite being the kindest and most functional family we see in the story. They fight for others, never quarrell amongst themselves, and only seek to adventure to help others, yet the Fates decided their mother should live to watch each of them die in youth.
• The Fallocaust series pulls this with Finn in Garden of Spiders. He's specifically chosen to be Elish's sengil due to being sweet and kind and gets gunned down after refusing to abandon Elish during an assassination attempt as a reward.
• The Fault in Our Stars:
  • Augustus alludes to this, saying, "Like, are you familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights her cancer with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, et cetera?"
  • "According to the conventions of this genre, he kept his sense of humor until the end, did not for a moment waver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul. But this was the truth..."
• John Coffey of the book and movie The Green Mile is a stellar example. Although not a child, he is a childlike Gentle Giant on death row for a crime he couldn't reasonably have committed, with magical healing powers and rather obvious Significant Monogram.
• Raamo in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy. Even by Kindar standards, he is quiet, humble, and completely without a violent bone in his body. Snyder killed him off at the end of the trilogy...but then realized she made a mistake with that and inverted the trope with possibly the first canonical video game sequel to a book.
• The "twist" death of Willow in Jodi Picoult's Handle with Care has strong overtones of this — several reviews have mentioned that the character was so wise and saintly that the story felt unrealistic.
• Harry Potter. If you are a kind, loving, sympathetic, well-liked character chances are YOU WILL DIE. This happens to Cedric, Dumbledore (In his later years anyway), Hedwig, Dobby, Fred, Sirius, Lupin, and Tonks. The only obvious aversion/subversion is Hagrid, who appears to be killed off a couple of times but manages to survive until the end.
• Quasimodo and Esmeralda are the most sympathetic of the cast in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They both die tragically due to Paris' injustices.
• Prim in The Hunger Games. Another beloved, sweet, and innocent little sister, as well as a natural healer and Friend to All Living Things.
• Murder victim Susan Althorp in I Heard That Song Before is treated as such by the media and even her mother views her this way; a beautiful, clever, charming eighteen-year old with her whole life ahead of her, until it was cruelly cut short. As it turns out, the truth is less rosy; it's revealed that Susan was addicted to cocaine and tried blackmailing a man for money when her father Charles cut off her allowance, in a futile attempt to control her addiction. Charles explains he concealed this information from his wife because he didn't want to tarnish Gladys's image of her as a perfect child. Drug addict or not, Susan definitely didn't deserve what happened to her, though.
• In Death series: Poor Marlena Kolchek. She was beautiful, innocent, and pure. Unfortunately, a gambling syndicate that Roarke was in a rivalry with kidnapped her, and performed a torture-murder on her that involved breaking her kneecaps and raping her. When they were done, they left her body on Roarke and Summerset's doorsteps. Her father Summerset wanted them punished, but the Inspector who was called in was a Dirty Cop in the syndicate's pocket, and he made sure the investigation led to nowhere. What a horrible thing to happen!
• Invoked in In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (based on the true story of the Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic). Mama says that she thought Patria was going to die at a young age because she was such a good child.
• Helen Burns, Jane's best friend in Jane Eyre, dies of tuberculosis right before a typhoid epidemic kills many girls in the Boarding School of Horrors. But Helen still has time to impress on Jane the importance of dedication to God and trusting in her own conscience more than the love of others.
• When Princess Sophia dies in The Kingdom of Little Wounds, the kingdom acts like this is the case, going so far as to call her "The Perished Lily."
• Les Misérables: Hugo seemed to have a thing for beautiful idealists who are exposed to the realities of this cruel world and die tragically young.
  • Fantine is driven by her love for Tholomyes and later Cosette. She lives in awful conditions and prostitutes herself to provide for Cosette, and eventually dies when she learns she won't get to see Cosette.
  • Enjolras does not allow any vice to distract him from his fight against oppression. His beauty and courage in the face of certain death make enemy soldiers hesitate to kill him, but not for long.
• The title character of "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen carries it off. Well, the narrative does not so much carry this trope as flamboyantly juggle it while singing the complete score to Handel's Messiah. Few works treat a little girl freezing to death as such an unequivocally wonderful thing.
• The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen, subverts this trope. The innocent and sweet mermaid who sacrifices her undersea life for love ends up giving up the boy she loves and sacrificing herself instead. However, the story makes it clear throughout that she doesn't have a soul — and upon her death, she is given a purgatorial afterlife where she might, with hard work and dedication, win a soul and go to heaven. So after her death, she begins to work her way up to Too Good For This Sinful Earth. Depressing, but not hopeless — which could well be the point.
• Beth, the sweet, saintly doomed March sister, from all the various iterations of Little Women is extremely saintly and pure, and since she has no ambitions other than to be at home with her sisters, adulthood just isn't going to happen for her.
• Simon from Lord of the Flies is the purest of the boys, who is senselessly murdered by the others. Subverted, however, in that Ralph is the only one of the group who actually cares... and aside from Piggy, seems to be the only one who notices, or at least, be willing to admit noticing. Simon was a full-fledged Christ figure. Seriously, there have been professional literary critics who've written essays on this very point.
• L. M. Montgomery:
  • In the Anne of Green Gables series, Walter, the poetic, sensitive, whimsical second son of Anne and Gilbert, is killed in action during World War I.
  • In Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, there is a Murray cousin who died young. This trope is invoked, almost by name, and the young boy is described as being more handsome and more virtuous than anyone. Ever. So naturally, he had to die.
• In Odtaa, Carlotta de Leyva, who is Doomed by Canon to be dead by the end of the book, is a young woman of remarkable beauty and grace, loved by all who meet her. (Except the villains, of course.)
• Little Nell, in The Old Curiosity Shop, is a all loving angel who wastes away of an unknown disease.
• The book and movie Pay It Forward, where the little boy at the story's center is killed while performing his third and final good deed... and is all but canonized by everyone else in the story.
• So many of the women from Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems. Poe himself wrote: "The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world"-"The Philosophy of Composition" (published 1846).
• Joshua in Sidney Sheldon's Rage of Angels dies at the age of seven after a blow to the head during a vacation. He was not only a perfect little boy (incredibly intelligent, good at sports, insightful, said the darndest things, etc.) but didn't lose his cheerful disposition despite being kidnapped and almost murdered — his mother Jennifer was so desperate to prevent it that she asked a Mafia prince to do everything he could to rescue him, up to and including killing the kidnapper. Jennifer sees his ultimate demise as karmic payback for, during the aforementioned trip, spending a night with his father Adam (the boy was the product of an illicit affair).
• Played With in The Scarlet Letter: The congregation believes Dimmesdale's health is declining because God wants to take such a good man to his eternal reward, but the actual reason for his coming death is his inner torment over hiding an affair.
• In A Separate Peace, the main character Gene reflects on the death of his best friend Finny and comes to the conclusion that Finny had to die because he was too good-hearted to be able to live during a war.
• In Sharp Objects, Marian was one of the sweetest little girls in Wind Gap, and dies tragically in childhood. The trauma of her early death is acutely felt by her family and loved ones decades later.
  • Played With for Ann and Natalie. They were also little girls who died in horrific ways, and they both had loved ones who miss them terribly. However, they were both regarded as being tough cookies with tempers and not just sugar and spice, with Natalie in particular having violent behavioral issues her family was working to control.
• In Someone Else's War, Otto is undeniably the kindest and most compassionate of the Child Soldiers. His offscreen death comes as a total shock later in the book.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaption Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark is a naive idealist who is horribly out of place in the Decadent Court that makes the Westeros aristocracy. Naturally, Ned loses his head and ends up dead.
  • Elia Martell as well. She was a Delicate and Sickly girl who was married to the handsome and beloved crown prince and secondhand accounts of her recall she possessed a sort of "sweet wit" that made her endearing to many in the King's Landing court. In the series' Great Offscreen War backstory, she ended up suffering a horrible and gruesome death at the hands of a pair of the most brutal and bloodthirsty attack dogs of the noble family that held a grudge against hers, a fate everyone agrees was one she really didn't deserve.
• The characters in Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead speculate the pequeninos are ritually killing the humans that did the most good as an act of gratitude that will free them from a world of suffering and malice.
• In Spin after Wun Ngo Wen, the man from Mars, gets killed by highway bandits, people start to see him this way. He would probably have disapproved.
• Henry Darger's Story of the Vivian Girls:
  • The book includes a subplot about a turbulent, half-mad girl named Jenny, who is killed (in a weather disaster, naturally) at the very end of the story. She lingers for a time, saying lovely Little Eva-like goodbyes to everyone. Her final words (and the last words in the book) are Oh, I see God!...
  • Henry's got boatloads of characters like this. Six-year-old Jennie Anges, who is "already marked for heaven", snatches consecrated communion hosts out of a church tabernacle to protect them from enemy soldiers who would desecrate them. Naturally, she gets desecrated instead.
• John Grisham's The Testament: Rachel Lane, a beautiful, saintly missionary doctor and long-lost daughter of tycoon Troy Phelan, dies of dengue fever and malaria in the penultimate chapter.
• Subverted in Jerome's Three Men in a Boat with the narrator's dog Monmorancy. When the narrator first got the dog, he was sure it was so good and fragile it would die shortly... until he witnessed the fox-terrier's aggressive nature.
• Jenny in The Truth of Rock And Roll: “And that was good. That was right. Jenny was made for another time and another place. She never fit in here.”
• In the La Vita Nuova, Beatrice dies young as her humility and magnanimity made her too noble to suffer life on fallen Earth. Instead, she passed into the realm of the angels as was befitting her.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin contains a particularly egregious example. When Little Eva falls sick, the author treats us to a whole page of waxing lyrical about children who die young because they are too good for this world, then there is a deathbed scene during which Eva has literal visions of heaven and preaches to the rest of the cast about them. Then there's a funeral scene in which Topsy, the little slave girl cries out that she wishes she had died too, as she can't bear losing Eva.
• Warrior Cats: Badgerfang mainly exists to both be a tragic example of a cat who died too young and to show how evil Brokenstar is. Badgerpaw was a three-month-old kitten who was forced to become an apprentice three months too soon. He was accidentally killed in battle. In StarClan, he was renamed "Badgerfang" because that would have been his warrior name if he had survived into adulthood.
• Dido from The Wolf Den Trilogy is the youngest of the she-wolves (brothel slaves). Despite her brutal circumstances, she is sweet, sensitive, and ethereally beautiful. At the end of the first book, she is fatally stabbed by a man who meant to kill her abusive owner Felix, an innocent killed in the crossfire of two warring criminals. Her memory hangs over the protagonist Amara for the rest of the series.
• The poem "Ye xu" ("Perhaps") by Chinese poet Wen Yi-duo, written as an elegy for his young son.
  Perhaps you've tired from your cryings.
  Perhaps, perhaps you need a sleep.
  ...
  Perhaps, listening to the earthworms burrowing
  The root-tips of young grass seeping water
  Listening to the music of such
  Is better than the curseful sound of humanity.
• Lennon Rose in Girls with Sharp Sticks, with her Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, her sunny disposition, and her flowery name. So of course she's the first one to go missing after breaking down in tears during the open house.
• Berenice Hollis and Jacques Deberiue are the only two genuinely decent human beings in The Burnt Orange Heresy. Berenice winds up beaten to death with a tire iron by her cruel boyfriend, while Jacques is sent to a nursing home by Cassidy where he dies only a year after being admitted.