Stop Resurrecting People
Introduction
Does anyone out there actually enjoy the resurrection trope? I mean, apart from God.
Look, if that offended you, I’ve got bad news about the rest of this post.
Resurrection has been an aspect of storytelling for hundreds—no, thousands—of years. And, much like the people who are being brought back to life, it isn’t being left to rest. Even in the most popular media out there, resurrection is given the limelight, potentially derailing or even ruining a story that people are otherwise enjoying. Or… does it? Does resurrection ruin every story out there, or are some improved by it? Is there still an audience out there that enjoys this trope and… should we care about what they want?
If you don’t know who I am: hey, I’m T. L. Bainter. I create posts about stories, run my own tabletop campaign, have several short story awards, and run a YouTube channel where I talk about stories and conduct an ongoing Discworld Read-Along! Nice to meet you. Nice for you to meet me, actually—I guess I haven’t met you yet, but I’d love to!
Today’s post has been a long time in the making; I’ve wanted to discuss it for some time, so strap in. Let’s dive into the history and mechanics of the resurrection tropes, figure out why it’s used and why people like it, then determine whether or not it’s a trope that should keep going or whether it should finally be laid to rest.
When Was the Resurrection Trope Brought to Life?
Examples of the resurrection trope surely jump to mind as soon as I mention it’s what I’m going to discuss. Everyone has experienced it. Adults have seen it, children have seen it, and even ancient Egyptians have seen it. Yep, that’s right, we’re going all the way back to Ancient Egypt to start this video—an era that absolutely fascinated me as a child. I checked all sorts of books on it from the library and ate up every chapter about it in every textbook I was forced to consume. Learning about Ancient Egypt was the most entertaining thing in my life.
Come on, you can’t tell me I’m the only one who had this massive obsession with Ancient Egypt from the ages of about 8-11. If you weren’t obsessed with Ancient Egypt back then, what were you obsessed with?
Anyway, Ancient Egypt!
The Cult of Osiris and Why Resurrection is Popular
Resurrection’s first known recurrence, meaning it is a consistent theme, is in Ancient Egyptian religions. Specifically around the deity Osiris, around which a cult was developed. Yeah, not only are we talking about Ancient Egypt, we’re talking about cults. Riveting! Buckle in, cause this is going to be quite the ride.
Osiris, the god most known for making his sister his wife—and I guess also being a god of death—has a pretty fascinating history. Now it’s not what this video is about, so I’m going to go ahead and make it pretty quick and snappy. Basically, Osiris was a king and the deity Set came to his banquet, set down a very nice coffin and said “Hey, whoever fits in here can have it”. Now Set had made sure that the coffin as perfectly fitted to Osiris, so when Osiris was set in the coffin, Set slammed the lid, locked it, and then set the coffin in the river.
Osiris’s wife, Isis, was pretty unhappy about her brother-husband being left to drown. So she found the coffin in the river and hid it in a marsh. Unfortunately, Set—now king—found it and chopped Osiris’s body into pieces just to make sure that his new rule wouldn’t be threatened. Isis, however, being a Canadian doctor, knew just what to do for such grievous wounds: she bandaged him up.
This was the first mummy, and this first mummy traveled to the underworld and became Lord of the Dead. It is around this god who was resurrected that the Cult of Osiris developed. It changed and shifted with time, and we aren’t getting into all of that here because this isn’t an Ancient Egypt blog. Essentially, though, the cult promised its followers eternal life. As you can expect, it gained popularity. Think of it as the transhumanism of Ancient Egypt. That’s a nod to my old friend who completely lost his mind to a cult. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty.
So the Cult of Osiris spread because hey, who doesn’t want eternal life? And so the people of Egypt began to develop rituals that would grant them eternal life: specifically, recreating the manner in which he was resurrected. This is why we’ve got mummies! Pretty cool, right? I would actually love to dive—no, no, no! This is not an Ancient Egypt blog! No time!
If you want to learn more about it—especially the dark intricacies of the burial process meant to ensure resurrection—I’d definitely suggest looking it up or checking out a local museum with an Ancient Egypt exhibit. Even researching through this video, I’m finding myself remembering why I thought this stuff was so awesome. However, we do have to move on!
What I think we can pull from this is why the concept of resurrection was popular and why a cult devoted to the Lord of the Underworld was so accepted as opposed to totally shut down as a bunch of weirdos. It appealed to the emotions of people. It appeals to our emotions. It’s why the people of Ancient Egypt worshipped Osiris and it’s why the people of modern America believe that an AI god is going to save them and preserve their brains to be used for robots.
Yeah, that’s another cheap shot at the Transhumanist rationality cult. Sue me (don’t, actually, I know you freaks have a lot more money than I do).
This idea of resurrection manipulated our base desire to live forever—to have the opportunity to finally, finally get it right. To get a do-over, to forge a better path, or maybe just to try that thing at Taco Bell that was discontinued but might be brought back in another life. If death isn’t the end, it means we get more time to do the things we really want to, and I think that’s all any of us want: a little more time. Even at my absolute lowest, when I’ve really, truly wanted to just die, there’s been a part of me that’s thought, “maybe I could come back and get it right, this time”. Whether I believe it or not aside, it does have a certain appeal. I see why the Cult of Osiris was so popular, and I see why this idea that our brains might be preserved so we can live forever with an AI god is also popular. We want to live forever and we want another chance to do things correctly. Resurrection gives you an opportunity to do things over, whether you’re reincarnated, brought back to the day of your birth, or just risen from the dead as a horrifying zombie. It’s another shot, and a lot of us would genuinely die for that.
Resurrection in Older Stories
So that’s the first recorded notion of resurrection as a theme, but it’s not really a story, is it? I mean, yes, religions are definitely viewed as stories by many of us, but it’s not really a story in the sense that we’re discussing. So when was resurrection popularized in stories? Do we know when the first instance of resurrection’s use in a story was?
Someone might, but I don’t. I spent a long time trying to find the answer, but everyone just points to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is not only not the oldest religious resurrection, it also isn’t even the kind of resurrection I’m looking for. Trying to find information like this is pretty challenging. If someone knows what the oldest mythological or fantastical story is that features resurrection, please let me know!
However, we do know that resurrection has been part of stories for some time. C. S. Lewis and Tolkien are renowned examples, of course. Even The Monkey’s Paw by Herbert White… sorta uses the trope, released over two hundred and twenty years ago. I’m sure there are much older examples because it’s something that we have always longed for as humans, probably since we first learned how to use our brains. We want ourselves to live forever. We want a loved one we lost to come walking through our door. We want there to be more than what there is. Resurrection has always been a story trope because it appeals to us. It was a trope before we knew what tropes were.
So my question is… should it continue?
The Problem with Resurrection
Getting into the nitty-gritty here and talk about why resurrection is problematic—no, not in real life. I’m not here to have that debate, and I know exactly how infuriating it is to have any sort of rational conversation with a supposed transhumanist. We’re not talking about why it’s problematic in real life, we’re going to discuss why it’s problematic in stories. Why does resurrection bother me so much that it makes more roll my eyes more often than it makes me weep with joy or gasp in surprise?
It Cheapens Death
My first, foremost, and most egregious complaint with resurrection is that it cheapens death. When you bring a character back from death, it makes all of those emotions that you felt when you lost that character feel wasted. Why did I mourn this character when they were just going to come back? Am I going to bother mourning them when I experience the story a second time? What was the point of all this? Just to sucker punch me and the surviving characters only to have no consequence?
Death is a consequence—a grave consequence if you will. It’s a consequence of many things, from poor decisions to just being up against odds that are too stacked against you. Jon Snow led the Wildlings past the wall, and the consequence for this was murder at the hands of the Watch, who had been established to not much care for the Wildlings. Simple as that. It was a very no-good-deed approach that fit Martin’s grimdark setting, and was extremely painful to watch. Harry Potter met Voldemort alone and was, rightly, hastily killed by the Dark Lord. Flynn Rider climbed into a tower to save Rapunzel. Osiris crawled into a coffin just to see if it fit him.
These characters all did things with a very obvious consequence: death.
And then, each of these characters was brought back to life, one way or another. And it’s not that we thought they were dead. It’s not that they were sort of dead. Each character was absolutely, unequivocally, dead. We felt the pain of their loss. We felt the pain of the characters experiencing that loss. We began to think about how the story will continue on without those characters, and then… all of it was for nothing. Their sacrifices, their loss, the story, it’s all left largely unimpacted. Their death was cheap.
Don’t worry, I’m going to talk more in-depth about each of those examples shortly, but we’ve got more to discuss in this section.
It Removes Stakes (Sometimes Entirely)
The next problem with resurrection? It eliminates the stakes of a story and setting, sometimes completely. Sure, you can make resurrection a challenge to accomplish—Game of Thrones did this, though unclearly—but when you just eliminate the very consequence of death even to a minor degree, it removes the stakes of your setting. I’m left wondering why we can’t resurrect everyone or why we can’t resurrect this other person who was way more valuable than the person you just brought back. Why can’t we get Eddard Stark back? Why can’t Rapunzel just resurrect anyone she wishes? Why can’t the Resurrection Stone be used to prevent the deaths of others? Some stories may attempt to explain away these questions, but the questions appear in our minds nonetheless and the answers are often meaningless.
I feel the same way about my tabletop campaigns—resurrection doesn’t have that high a cost, at least in D&D (#DNDBegone). I personally bake that cost into my campaign, which we’ll talk about more in-depth shortly, but even still I don’t like resurrection as a general rule because it removes those stakes. Death is huge, it’s part of life and it’s something we all need to deal with and face. If you are lucky enough to have never lost a loved one, then I envy you. It’s hard, but it’s also important. Acceptance of such a challenging and heartbreaking event is vital, and you can’t accept it if you know there’s a chance of impermanence.
Why Can’t the Bad Guy Return (or Vice Versa)?
While there are many, many issues with resurrection as a rule, I’m trying to stick with three primary reasons, and this is my third reason: why can’t the bad guy also come back? Or, if the bad guy came back, why can’t the good guys come back? Why is your world or setting’s resurrection so selective and picky?
If Palpatine can somehow return, can Anakin somehow come back, too? If Jon Snow can come back from the dead, can Ramsay Bolton also be brought back? Why or why not? What contrived explanation do you have for resurrecting some characters but not others? Why does Flynn Rider get to live but Rapunzel arbitrarily can’t or won’t bring back Mother Gothel, whom she actually stretches out her hand to attempt to save when she falls out of the window?
And, if the bad guy can come back, then what’s this all for? Is your story focused around trying to destroy the lich’s phylactery to prevent it from returning the next time it’s destroyed, or are the heroes just going to kill him only to have to fight him again… and again… and again? Or if, they only kill the bad guy once, why when resurrection has been established? All of this has to be explained for me to care because I can only suspend my disbelief so much. The more I have to suspend my disbelief, the less likely I am to enjoy your story. At least work within your own world’s rules and establish what those rules are!
Examples of Resurrection’s Execution (Good and Bad)
Let’s delve a little further into examples of resurrection. I’ve picked out some that I like, which I feel helped the story, as well as some that I dislike, which I feel harmed the story. I’ll get into specifics for each one and will talk about how the absence of resurrection would have improved or impaired the tale in question. We’re going to start with what could have been Disney’s best princess film of all time: Tangled.
Tangled and Resurrection
Are you surprised to see a Disney princess movie on this list at all? Shame on you—my hatred for the resurrection trope has no limitations! You should know me better than that. Tangled is actually one of my favorite Disney films that fall into the princess category, falling behind films like Atlantis and Hunchback of Notre Dame, but we’re not here to talk about those. One of the things that hold Tangled back, in my opinion, is its resurrection. It could have been a near-perfect film if Flynn hadn’t been resurrected at the end. Seriously—that’s how good I think it was… and how far I think it fell.
Flynn Rider, better known as Eugene, had a complete character arc throughout the course of Tangled. He went from an uncaring dastard to a loving and affectionate man. The crescendo of this arc was when Flynn sacrificed himself to free Rapunzel from what he—and she—viewed as a curse. It was a beautiful, well-done moment.
A moment that was immediately ruined by completely undoing everything that Flynn’s sacrifice meant. Not only that, but Rapunzel pulls this ability to restore Flynn to life after he died out of nowhere. It just happens. She cries on him and the dude comes back to life. Anyone older than six is left wondering if anything meant anything, at that point. Flynn’s sacrifice was cheapened and rendered nigh meaningless by this.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Resurrection
Let’s get the Joss Whedon hate out of the way, okay? I get it, I know—he’s really cringey, gross, and creepy. I’ve never really liked him as a person, but he has some good stories under his belt and that’s all we’re talking about here, all right? If you wanna flame about Joss, just don’t drag me into it saying I came in here defending him. Thanks.
Anyway… Buffy the Vampire Slayer notoriously handled resurrection with near-perfection. First of all, there is an establishment of kinds of deaths in Buffy’s universe. There are mystical deaths and non-mystical deaths, the latter of which cannot be reversed in the same way that a mystical death can. When Buffy was killed off at the end of Season 5 (which was supposed to be the end of the series).
Because Buffy’s death in the fifth season was mystical, however, she is able to be resurrected in the sixth season. Regardless of what you think about the sixth and seventh season, most of us can agree that the resurrection was handled well. Not only was the means of resurrection pre-established (there are several prior examples, some of which even reference Osiris, if you remember our discussion about Osiris several years ago… or minutes? It feels like years, this post is long), but the cost was readily apparent after Buffy’s resurrection. Buffy returned confused and disoriented, and she was also happy and at peace in her death, implying the great selfishness of bringing her back to life.
Harry Potter and Resurrection
Yes, yes, J. K. Rowling sucks. She and Joss Whedon can sit in the same corner while we talk about their stories, okay? I’ll set them right over there with Orson Scott Card. Good? Good. Okay, let’s continue as normal. No, no, no, Rowling stay where you’re put!
Okay, so the resurrection of Harry Potter was central to the plot of the Deathly Hallows, and yet the stage was perfectly set for a better ending in which Harry Potter was left to die (I’ve talked about this briefly before, in my Let the Chosen One Die post). Let’s delve into how the story could have been better without resurrection.
It was set up throughout the series that Neville Longbottom could well have been the Chosen One. Additionally, he was all-around a much better person than Harry throughout the series. Harry Potter sacrificing himself to give Voldemort a false sense of victory so that Neville could deal the killing blow rather than Harry (or, I guess, Voldemort, since he technically took his own spell to the face) would have been a substantially more compelling and interesting ending.
Instead, we’re given the ultimately predictable ending of Harry Potter dying, coming back to life, and offing Voldemort. It was set up in advance that this was what was going to happen, so I can’t fault the world for having poor establishment of its resurrection, but the story wasn’t better for it. Can you honestly tell me that an ending in which the story’s own expectations were subverted while adhering to the laws of its setting wouldn’t have been better?
I’m not really as into Harry Potter lore as I used to be, but there are some folks out there who have done great work establishing how an ending that appoints Neville as the Chosen One is an improvement, and I’d encourage you to check out those theories and explanations if you want more insight into this. For now, I’m moving on…
At World’s End and Resurrection
Okay, now let’s talk about At World’s End, an incredible, cohesive, well-structured, sensible film that… yeah, I can’t say that with a straight face. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a gigantic, senseless, indecipherable mess. It’s entertaining, sure, and fun to watch, but if you so much as glance in the plot’s direction, it begins openly weeping through all of its holes (and there are a lot of them). However, one thing in the film that I do like is its resurrection. Hold up, don’t start raging about that not making sense! Let me explain.
From the very beginning of the movie, it is established that bringing someone back from the dead is both the goal of this film and an impossible task. They need all sorts of things in order to make it happen, and it requires a great deal of effort just to get to Jack Sparrow. Bringing him back is a whole other ordeal. They also do a good job of establishing why Jack Sparrow needs to be brought back to life.
Additionally, Jack’s death at the end of the previous film wasn’t the result of some great character moment for Jack or some huge revelation he’d had that led to a moment of goodwill and self-sacrifice. He was sentenced to death by Elizabeth at the end of the film, full stop. Few people of any real value stood to gain anything substantial by Jack’s demise, either—the world is significantly worse off without him, and there isn’t much of a path forward without Sparrow, being one of the Pirate Lords.
So, resurrection in this setting is an immensely complex, nearly-impossible task in this setting—just getting to the person who has passed is next to impossible, and getting back is even more challenging. You wouldn’t do it for just anyone, and not everyone goes the way Jack did, so it makes sense that resurrection doesn’t just happen all the time. When someone dies in this setting, you can be reasonably confident that person isn’t making a comeback short of some incredible intervention*.
*I’d like to specify that I’m fully aware that Barbosa was resurrected by other means—however, he was specifically brought back by a goddess who emphasizes that she could take this away whenever she pleases—it’s a lot more of a tethered reanimation than a true resurrection.
Game of Thrones and Resurrection
One more! This time, I’m going to be diving into Game of Thrones, specifically the resurrection of Jon Snow, which was… predictable and yet not well-foreshadowed or pre-established. Jon Snow suffered a death that made absolute sense. He lives in a dark, gritty, unforgiving world, and he violated the code of the Watch, which already didn’t look on him favorably. Many members of the watch had already been looking for a reason to kill Jon, simply disliking him from day one. It made sense that he was killed off, especially for doing the right thing. A core principle for grimdark settings is that no good need goes unpunished.
Jon Snow was punished… and then that punishment was undone, pretty much immediately. We got a cliffhanger, then we got Jon Snow back to life, and then we carried on. There were minimal consequences for this resurrection, and there were also minimal consequences for his death. Misandre resurrects him due to her belief that he’s the Prince that was Promised, but did he have to be? Could there have been another prince out there to make the story more compelling? How much more fascinating would it have been for there to be someone else out there who could take that mantle and stop the death march of Ice of Fire? They killed of Jon Snow, but we didn’t gain anything from that death, nor did we lose anything because it was undone immediately after the act was committed.
Jon’s death and resurrection were, ultimately, pointless.
How Can Resurrection be Done Right?
Before we dive into talking about how resurrection can be done properly, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve discussed so far in this post. Do you have examples of resurrections that were done well or examples of resurrections done poorly? What do you hate about resurrections, and what do you love about them? Is there anything specific you can think about that makes a resurrection great and impactful, as opposed to hollow and meaningless? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Carrying on with my final thoughts before closing this post, I want to end on a more positive note. I don’t want it to sound like resurrection is an absolute dealbreaker for any story—it can be done properly, and there are great examples out there of resurrections that enhance a story rather than inhibit. So let’s take a minute here to go over some elements of resurrections that can make it viable. I’ve thought of three essential attributes for a successful resurrection: cost, rule, and reason.
Cost
It’s imperative that resurrection have a cost, and a substantial one at that. I personally love the idea of equivalent exchange, such as needing to sacrifice oneself to bring another back to life—there are all sorts of directions something like this can be taken. Whatever the cost of a resurrection may be, I believe it absolutely has to be so great that both the audience and the characters are wondering if the price is truly worth what will be given in return.
Rule
Before a resurrection takes place or becomes a viable option for the characters in a story, the rules surrounding resurrection should be clearly established. It’s imperative that a story’s consumers understand how resurrections work, what their limitations are, and why they don’t just happen all the time. The rules of the resurrection should ensure that there are still stakes when it comes to death, even if death isn’t permanent for everyone.
Reason
Lastly, resurrection needs to have a reason. The story needs to be better because a character was resurrected. This applies to heroes and villains. Before a storyteller considers bringing someone back to life, it should be asked if there is a more impactful, meaningful, and compelling path that could be taken which allows death to maintain its sting in the lives of those the dead have left behind. If there’s a legitimate, meaningful, and powerful reason for a character’s resurrection, then the resurrection needs to happen. Jack Sparrow, for example, needed to be resurrected as one of the Pirate Lords. Buffy, interestingly, didn’t need to be resurrected, but they wanted her to be resurrected, and their selfishness was highlighted as a result (thus, she did need to be resurrected, as this led to compelling storytelling and interesting discussion).
Summing Up
All right, that was quite the ride! I appreciate you sticking with me through it. Let’s take a minute to sum up everything that’s been discussed in today’s post about the resurrection trope (and why I hate it and wish you’d stop bringing people back to life).
The History of Resurrection
We opened up by talking about the fascinating history of resurrection, tracing it all the way back to the Cult of Osiris, the Egyptian God of the Underworld. We even learned a bit about mummies along the way, which is always a bonus!
Why Resurrection is Popular
In talking about resurrection’s history, we discovered why it’s so enticing and magnetizing: we don’t want to die, or at the very least we don’t want death to be the end. As humans, we don’t want to accept a final goodbye or ultimately conclusion to our lives or the lives of those we care about. Even if we hate our lives now, part of us would give anything to try again and do better the second time around. Resurrection is appealing because it appeals to our desire to survive anything, even death.
What’s Wrong with Resurrection?
Despite its popularity, however, resurrection is problematic in storytelling. It cheapens death, removes stakes, and can even undo a great deal of character growth and development. Resurrection can potentially break an entire setting, leaving those who were otherwise enjoying the story to wonder why their other favorite characters can’t be brought back to life, too.
How Do We Fix Resurrection?
Fixing resurrection is a challenge and must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis; every setting and story is different! However, I identified three things that can greatly contribute to ensuring a meaningful resurrection in a story: a cost associated with bringing someone back to life, clearly established rules surrounding returning from the dead, and a comprehensible reason behind the decision to resurrect someone rather than leaving that person in the grave.
Conclusion
This post has been a long time in the making—I’ve been wanting to create it for many, many months. In fact, now that I think of it, I may have wanted to make this post for over a year, but I’m glad I waited as long as I did so that I could make sure it's of the highest quality possible! This is something that’s really important to me, and I’m sure it’s important to a lot of other folks, too. I appreciate you taking the time to check out my thoughts on this, and I’d likewise love to hear your own!