# Offing the leader/mentor



## Aidan of the tavern (Sep 5, 2012)

It seems to be a common thing, especially in fantasy that for the protagonist to flourish, or to make things more pessimistic, the mentor/leader figure must come to an untimely demise.  In my experience this can happen for a variety of reasons, for the protag to survive, or come into his/her own, to give more drive to the story and increase the impending danger, or simply as a sort of payment in exchange for the good guys winning.  Sometimes of course they come back again (Gandalf, Obi-wan Kenobi, Aslan, etc), but the damage is usually done.

Obviously it can be a very powerful tool, Gandalf's death allowed the fellowship to break and go their own way, Dumbledore's death was a huge blow and left Harry largely without guidance, often its an oppertunity for the protagonist to take over and fulfill the legacy.  Anyway, what are your thoughts on the whole death of leaders/mentors business?  Do you think its becoming too predictable?

Also another question.  If my mentor was alive at the end of the story do you think some readers would in a way be disappointed (even if the good side had paid dearly for their victory)?  I'm just wondering if some people would consider his blood a necersarry sacrifice for victory.  I would still have him out of the way for quite a while (in the Hobbit for instance Gandalf has to leave them for most of the book, then in the Fellowship he gets captured), so I was just wondering what your thoughts were.  Another thought I had was for the mentor to die at the end from illness.


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## JCFarnham (Sep 5, 2012)

I guess you could say it's become rather predictable, but a relationship like the mentor/pupil one is by nature one where the student uses the mentor as their crutch when they mess up. At some point in that relationship the mentor has to say "enough is enough" so the student can grow into their own person. Its a must almost, but I doesn't have to be. In fiction this is often achieved by killing the mentor off and leads in most case to bassass rampage. It works. It plays to the rule of cool. Why get rid of it?

The predicatability of this relationship is something I'm playing on in my new wip. I have a girl whose grandmother has died, an older man on whom she dotes in a platonic way and who acts as the mentor. She is much worse off with the mentor figure as she refuses to try anything new, to grow, and finds it detrimentally difficult to be without him. Instead of killing him off I'm sending him away of his own accord. 

It not a new twist, but at least it's something.*_*
_
There's still plenty more good reasons to play on this trope than bad (*in my opinion*). It's such an archetype that its frighteningly easy to twist. You don't _have_ to play it straight. You could even lampshade it for a bit of humour.

Not killing off your mentor isn't a problem. However, if they are significantly better equipped to solve the main conflict of the book then they need to plausibly gotten rid of. This isn't a problem so much if the student has already surpassed the mentor and the challenge faced is something far worse than the mentor could deal with (like an illness?).

_**I don't yet know where I'm going with this pair or story as I'm  trying out a new method of writing. Namely only outline a scene ahead of  where you are. I call it "Writing like you were reading." Bit more  unpredicatable, but to a confessed plotter like me, it's surprisingly  liberating._


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## Aidan of the tavern (Sep 5, 2012)

JCFarnham said:


> I guess you could say it's become rather predictable, but a relationship like the mentor/pupil one is by nature one where the student uses the mentor as their crutch when they mess up. At some point in that relationship the mentor has to say "enough is enough" so the student can grow into their own person. Its a must almost, but I doesn't have to be. In fiction this is often achieved by killing the mentor off and leads in most case to bassass rampage. It works. It plays to the rule of cool. Why get rid of it?
> 
> The predicatability of this relationship is something I'm playing on in my new wip. I have a girl whose grandmother has died, an older man on whom she dotes in a platonic way and who acts as the mentor. She is much worse off with the mentor figure as she refuses to try anything new, to grow, and finds it detrimentally difficult to be without him. Instead of killing him off I'm sending him away of his own accord.
> 
> ...



Helpful answer, thanks.


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## Ireth (Sep 5, 2012)

My vampire protagonist and his mentor have an interesting (hopefully) relationship. When they meet, the mentor is blinded and traumatized, leading the protagonist to care for him for quite a while during the healing process, both physical and mental. The protagonist becomes a seeing-eye guide to the mentor, as the blindness is permanent due to the fact that he no longer has any eyes: they were burned from their sockets. Then, as he slowly adjusts to being blind and uses his other senses more to compensate and thus get around better, the mentor teaches the protagonist about what it means to be a vampire -- about their unique bodily functions, how to feed on animals such as deer, sheep or cattle without killing them, the nature of corruption due to drinking human blood, etc. Their relationship will also take on shades of romance, which will complicate things later on. The mentor actually survives until the climax, during which he sacrifices himself to protect the protagonist (and as a result, he is redeemed and comes back soon after as a human, something neither of them foresaw). That has a huge impact on their relationship as well, understandably, particularly the romance.


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## Sheilawisz (Sep 5, 2012)

That thing about the mentor/wise character that helps to guide the protagonist is indeed a classic part of Fantasy, but unlike other cliches, I am not against it in particular and, in my opinion, the fact that the wise character usually dies at some point can be useful for the story.

The Mage princess that is the protagonist of my first Fantasy series actually has two wise mentors: The first is the best friend of her dead mother, and the second is a young military leader of the rival city that eventually becomes one of her best friends. Her mother's friend killed herself in battle in the final novel, and this helped the princess to move forward and take a very important decision by herself.

Her other wise mentor/friend never died, and she took an important role later in the story =)

It's not necessary for the wise mentors to die, different approaches can be taken and you can do many different and useful things with this kind of characters...


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## Penpilot (Sep 5, 2012)

Loss of the mentor is part of the classic heroes journey. Losing the mentor doesn't have to always mean death and can take on different forms but it's part of that story archetype, so it's been around forever and it works. 

It speaks on many levels. The hero no longer has a safety net. The hero has to take up the torch and go on. The hero must persevere despite great loss. ETC.


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## Androxine Vortex (Sep 5, 2012)

In my novel the main character actually ends up making enemies with his mentor. I thought it would be a cool twist! I think that the death of a mentor-type character is good because it's not like someone who just died "willy-nilly." It was an important character who made significant contributions to the plot.


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## Feo Takahari (Sep 5, 2012)

I think the mentor only _needs_ to die if you rely, explicitly or otherwise, on the concept of power levels. If the mentor starts out as "mighty," and the villain starts out as "mighty," you need to kill off the mentor so the mentor won't kill off the villain before the protagonist can become "mighty" enough to do so himself. On the other hand, if your universe allows for a lower-powered character to defeat a higher-powered character through strategizing and preying on weaknesses, or if the conflicts of your story are against an abstract force rather than a physical villain, then just giving your mentor a weakness or two will allow him to stick around without becoming a deus ex machina.

For reference, the best book I've ever read that doesn't kill off the mentor is _The Last Book in the Universe_ (the novel, not the short story, the latter of which does kill off the mentor.)

P.S. This is a bit off-topic, but as a dedicated Socialist, the concept of a singular hero rings false to me. I wouldn't even be alive today without all the benefits brought to me from living in an organized society, so my protagonists tend to build societies in miniature, compensating for each others' weaknesses. A mentor character fits into that dynamic quite well.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Sep 5, 2012)

...I actually prefer to have the mentor turn out to be the main villain.


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## Chris Conley (Sep 5, 2012)

Kill off the student instead.  Keep the mentor.


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## morfiction (Sep 5, 2012)

It didn't work for me in the case of Eragon...


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## Snowpoint (Sep 6, 2012)

I wonder if the trope namer, Mentor from the Odyssey, died in that story. I'll have to look it up.

As for myself, my only motivation for fighting evil is that some old guy taught me stuff and died. The problem is that the hero only reacts to the villain. The hero has zero personal investment in the plot, so somebody has to die. Since the Mentor has zero character traits other than teaching, once the teaching is over he must die.

Most stories have passive heroes. Their only character trait is that they disagree with the villain. It just isn't strong writing.


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## Penpilot (Sep 6, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> ...I actually prefer to have the mentor turn out to be the main villain.



This would just be a different form of the mentor dying. 

On a side note, mentors can take many forms and you'd be surprised at how many stories have them. In real life we all have mentors, whether they be our parents, a friend, or some guy at a bus stop that gives us a good piece of advice.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Sep 6, 2012)

I think it's a basic enough trope that it's in no danger of becoming overused or passÃ©. It's easy to point at really blindingly obvious examples of it happening (e.g. _Eragon_), but for the most part it's a valuable trope because it bears a strong resemblance to something we all (well, most of us) go through in real life: the loss of a parent, who are, ideally, our mentors early in life.

Most of our lives don't resemble epic adventure narratives, but still, we have all (well, most of us) had the experience of losing the guidance of someone older and wiser. That's not likely to ever change.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Sep 6, 2012)

Penpilot said:


> This would just be a different form of the mentor dying.



Only if he stops mentoring the hero after being revealed as the villain. 

"Come on, lad, you'll never defeat me at this rate! I'm not going to vanquish myself, you know."


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## Aosto (Sep 6, 2012)

In my current wip the mentor turns out to be a vilan. Not the main antagonist, but a antagonist overall. My mc has a struggle between killing him or not. Driving forces lead him to not, but my mc moves on. I don't kill off the mentor just yet and he will make an appearance in the second novel.


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## ChristielleKeenan (Sep 7, 2012)

What if, say for instance, in my first fantasy book, I have two protagonists in love who share the same mentor. Instead of killing off my mentor as she cannot die, I am toying with the idea of killing off the lesser of the two protagonists. How can I go about this without upsetting the readers?


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## Steerpike (Sep 7, 2012)

ChristielleKeenan said:


> What if, say for instance, in my first fantasy book, I have two protagonists in love who share the same mentor. Instead of killing off my mentor as she cannot die, I am toying with the idea of killing off the lesser of the two protagonists. How can I go about this without upsetting the readers?



Nothing wrong with upsetting the reader. If they care about the protagonist, then they _should _be upset when he/she dies. If they aren't, you've failed to create an emotional connection between the reader and the character. You want them to care about the character; that makes the death all the more powerful.


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## Aidan of the tavern (Sep 7, 2012)

ChristielleKeenan said:


> What if, say for instance, in my first fantasy book, I have two protagonists in love who share the same mentor. Instead of killing off my mentor as she cannot die, I am toying with the idea of killing off the lesser of the two protagonists. How can I go about this without upsetting the readers?



That could lead into quite a lengthy discussion so you might want to create a new thread for it.


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## ChristielleKeenan (Sep 7, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Nothing wrong with upsetting the reader. If they care about the protagonist, then they _should _be upset when he/she dies. If they aren't, you've failed to create an emotional connection between the reader and the character. You want them to care about the character; that makes the death all the more powerful.



Thank you for this...I was mostly afraid that, if I did this, since this character is so endearing, and so real, that I would alienate or thusly put the reader off from further reading anymore of the series, though I think I am getting ahead of myself there a bit I think. lol.


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## Ireth (Sep 7, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Nothing wrong with upsetting the reader. If they care about the protagonist, then they _should _be upset when he/she dies. If they aren't, you've failed to create an emotional connection between the reader and the character. You want them to care about the character; that makes the death all the more powerful.



Thanks for this, Steerpike, even though it isn't directed at me. XD Makes me feel a lot better abut killing off one or two of the protagonists in a WIP. It's really the best ending possible for those left alive, and for those who die as well, since they otherwise would suffer a worse fate (at least in their eyes).


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## Steerpike (Sep 7, 2012)

Yeah, there are plenty of series where beloved characters are killed. Maybe some readers will stop reading, but most of them won't if you give them something else to hold on to. Look at Dumbledore, for example, in the Harry Potter series. By the time he's killed, I think it is fair to say he is a beloved character. I know people who were upset by his death, but I don't know anyone who quit reading the series. Why? Because they also care about Harry, or Ron, or Hermione, or Hagrid, or Ginny, or (insert favorite character here), and they care about the story and the resolution to the story.

If the only thing your story has going for it is that the reader cares about that one character, and couldn't care less about anything else, then you're going to have a problem. But if you give the reader other things to care about, and make the death meaningful in story terms as well, then you have a powerful event that may upset the reader but isn't going to stop them reading. In the end, it may make for a more powerful reading experience.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Sep 7, 2012)

ChristielleKeenan said:


> What if, say for instance, in my first fantasy book, I have two protagonists in love who share the same mentor. Instead of killing off my mentor as she cannot die, I am toying with the idea of killing off the lesser of the two protagonists. How can I go about this without upsetting the readers?



What worries me about this question is that you are wording it as if it doesn't matter which of these two characters you kill. It makes it sound like you just want to kill someone, nevermind who, like you have a kill quota or something. 

If you're going to kill characters you should have real solid reasons for doing so. It has to be _important _somehow, not just a way to make the main character sad or create cheap suspense. Killing a character should be a pivotal point that changes the course of the entire plot and has a profound effect on the people close to them, otherwise you are admitting that your characters just aren't important. 

If you have no particular reason to kill the mentor, then don't kill the mentor. If you have no particular reason to kill the secondary MC, then don't kill the secondary MC. Or, for that matter, go ahead and kill both of them. But only if you have a very good reason.


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## Shockley (Sep 7, 2012)

Snowpoint said:


> I wonder if the trope namer, Mentor from the Odyssey, died in that story. I'll have to look it up.



 Spoiler/answer: The figure guiding Telemachus is not Mentor, it just looks like Mentor. It's actually Athena.

 Which is a pretty neat twist on this idea in its own right.


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## ChristielleKeenan (Sep 7, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> What worries me about this question is that you are wording it as if it doesn't matter which of these two characters you kill. It makes it sound like you just want to kill someone, nevermind who, like you have a kill quota or something.
> 
> If you're going to kill characters you should have real solid reasons for doing so. It has to be _important _somehow, not just a way to make the main character sad or create cheap suspense. Killing a character should be a pivotal point that changes the course of the entire plot and has a profound effect on the people close to them, otherwise you are admitting that your characters just aren't important.
> 
> If you have no particular reason to kill the mentor, then don't kill the mentor. If you have no particular reason to kill the secondary MC, then don't kill the secondary MC. Or, for that matter, go ahead and kill both of them. But only if you have a very good reason.



Hello! thank you for your comment. Yes, I do have a good reason that I have been toying with. The death of the lesser of the two will have a profound effect on the remaining protagonist. Since they are soulmates, it will cause him to go a bit mad, which is right where I want him.


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## Aidan of the tavern (Nov 7, 2012)

I'm now tempted by the idea of the good guys winning in the end, but then shortly after the mentor dies from wounds or illness or something.  It would still be a hard earned victory, and the mentor would be out of the way for parts of it, but I can see it as being a bittersweet bit of closure.  The last thing that happens is a powerful tool.


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## Feo Takahari (Nov 7, 2012)

I think I've figured out part of why I don't like the pattern of the mentor dying--I don't like the implications for when the protagonist grows to become mentor to a new hero. If each hero's ultimate fate is to become a mentor and die, never able to settle down and live in peace, is there even a reason for your hero to get out of bed in the morning?


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## Aidan of the tavern (Nov 7, 2012)

Feo Takahari said:


> I think I've figured out part of why I don't like the pattern of the mentor dying--I don't like the implications for when the protagonist grows to become mentor to a new hero. If each hero's ultimate fate is to become a mentor and die, never able to settle down and live in peace, is there even a reason for your hero to get out of bed in the morning?



Interesting point.  Maybe thats why I also like the idea of the protagonist becoming a farmer or something in the end.


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## Twook00 (Nov 7, 2012)

> Anyway, what are your thoughts on the whole death of leaders/mentors business? Do you think its becoming too predictable?



I've never been a big fan of this, not unless it just comes out of no where and catches me off gaurd.  I see the value in it, but there has to be an alternative by now.

The mentor turns out to be the villain - I don't like this.  It's not very satisfying to me.

The mentor is captured - This has potential and can add to the plot (now the character has to save the mentor).

The mentor becomes a vegetable - Someone casts a spell, the mentor loses all memory and sense of self, the character feels responsible and tries to look after him which adds more complications.

The mentor takes the dark side - It would be interesting if something happened to the mentor that made him switch sides during the story.  Like if Darth Vadar was your mentor until he got all burned up and stuff.

The mentor gets in over his head - What if the MC and the mentor show up somewhere and the mentor just doesn't know what to do?

I don't know.  These are all pretty lame but I think the point is to raise the stakes, add complication, and force the MC to step up to the plate so he can become the hero.  Surely there are other ways for this to happen.


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## wordwalker (Nov 8, 2012)

Feo Takahari said:


> I think I've figured out part of why I don't like the pattern of the mentor dying--I don't like the implications for when the protagonist grows to become mentor to a new hero. If each hero's ultimate fate is to become a mentor and die, never able to settle down and live in peace, is there even a reason for your hero to get out of bed in the morning?



But isn't everyone's fate to die?

(Various immortal characters excepted; moving on...)

That's the other reason mentors die, besides the balance of power: as a nod to how most people do leave their mentors behind, by either outliving them, moving away, falling out with them (mentors becoming villains counts!), or so on. All part of life.


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## Mindfire (Nov 9, 2012)

Feo Takahari said:


> I think I've figured out part of why I don't like the pattern of the mentor dying--I don't like the implications for when the protagonist grows to become mentor to a new hero. If each hero's ultimate fate is to become a mentor and die, never able to settle down and live in peace, is there even a reason for your hero to get out of bed in the morning?



You ever get the feeling that these mentor types _want_ to die? That after they pass the torch to the next generation they'd rather be remembered for going out in a blaze of glory than quietly passing away in their sleep in a comfy cottage? It puts a new spin on the mentor death trend. Might even make an interesting character idea.


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## Helen (Nov 10, 2012)

Aidan of the tavern said:


> Also another question.  If my mentor was alive at the end of the story do you think some readers would in a way be disappointed (even if the good side had paid dearly for their victory)?  I'm just wondering if some people would consider his blood a necersarry sacrifice for victory.  I would still have him out of the way for quite a while (in the Hobbit for instance Gandalf has to leave them for most of the book, then in the Fellowship he gets captured), so I was just wondering what your thoughts were.  Another thought I had was for the mentor to die at the end from illness.



Well, there's Silence of the Lambs. 

Lecter is Clarice's mentor and he survives.


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## Ireth (Nov 10, 2012)

Helen said:


> Well, there's Silence of the Lambs.
> 
> Lecter is Clarice's mentor and he survives.



That may be a different case, because arguably Hannibal is one of the villains, along with Buffalo Bill.


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## ScipioSmith (Nov 11, 2012)

Feo Takahari said:


> I think I've figured out part of why I don't like the pattern of the mentor dying--I don't like the implications for when the protagonist grows to become mentor to a new hero. If each hero's ultimate fate is to become a mentor and die, never able to settle down and live in peace, is there even a reason for your hero to get out of bed in the morning?



That is exactly how it is supposed to work in my universe: each First Sword spends his life guarding the gates of paradise, never allowed to go in, never allowed to relax his vigil enough to do more than glimpse inside, and then you die; passing the mantle to someone else while you...serve the Empress in death as you did in life. 

It's a job that attracts a certain kind of person shall we say, one willing to accept the self sacrifice and submission of self into the cause of a greater whole that the story valorizes.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Nov 11, 2012)

Ireth said:


> That may be a different case, because arguably Hannibal is one of the villains, along with Buffalo Bill.



I see Lecter as more of an antagonist to Clarice (forcing her to confront her past) but not as a villain per se. Aside from his escape at the end (oh, spoilers, lollerskates), he spends most of his story time just hassling Clarice.


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## wordwalker (Nov 11, 2012)

Ireth said:


> That may be a different case, because arguably Hannibal is one of the villains, along with Buffalo Bill.



Then again, maybe the core dramatic need is just that the mentor is *gone*, so the hero can't keep letting him do the work. So Lector escaping fills the same function as dying.

But then, it wasn't strictly necessary since the way he "helped" Clarice was hard enough for her that she was still carrying her own weight. (Ahh, for the Clarice/Hannibal TV series that might have been, at least for as long as they could keep those cellside negotiations fresh...)


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## Sheriff Woody (Nov 12, 2012)

It's not just in fantasy, but in stories in general. 

You have to remove the mentor before the protagonist can make that necessary step and be able to arc. 

In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter escapes from the makeshift prison and disappears. This leaves Clarice on her own for the first time with nobody to turn to for guidance. She must find the will to press on and end the conflict on her own.

This particular example stands out because the escape literally has no other bearing on the plot. The sole purpose for having Lecter escape is to put Clarice on her own with no mentor to turn to.


EDIT: Wow, I typed all that before reading any more than the first page (because I'm lazy). Goes to show you the power of good storytelling.


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## Mindfire (Nov 12, 2012)

Is it possible to write a story where the mentor DOESN'T die? Food for thought.


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## Feo Takahari (Nov 12, 2012)

Well, Barda in Deltora Quest is archetypally a mentor, but functionally a co-protagonist who survives the entire series. And like I mentioned earlier, Ryter is the driving force throughout The Last Book in the Universe.


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## Penpilot (Nov 12, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Is it possible to write a story where the mentor DOESN'T die? Food for thought.



The mentor dying, doesn't have to be literally dying. It's figurative and they just have to be removed from the equation so they can not help the protagonist in time or at all. Doing this sets up the protagonist so they have to succeed without a safety net, where the protagonist's failure is the failure of everything. Where's the tension if the protagonist fails and then the mentor just steps in and saves the day? The story might as well have been about the mentor instead of the student because for all intents and purposes the protagonist didn't matter.


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## Mindfire (Nov 12, 2012)

Penpilot said:


> The mentor dying, doesn't have to be literally dying. It's figurative and they just have to be removed from the equation so they can not help the protagonist in time or at all. Doing this sets up the protagonist so they have to succeed without a safety net, where the protagonist's failure is the failure of everything. Where's the tension if the protagonist fails and then the mentor just steps in and saves the day? The story might as well have been about the mentor instead of the student because for all intents and purposes the protagonist didn't matter.



That's sort of what I meant. For the purposes of the story, mentor death is kind of inevitable.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Nov 13, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> That's sort of what I meant. For the purposes of the story, mentor death is kind of inevitable.



_The Matrix_ comes to mind. Morpheus is the obvious mentor character for Neo, but Morpheus doesn't die; in fact he outlives Neo.

However Morpheus's _role_ as a mentor ends partway through the first movie, so in that sense, the mentor _does_ "die," even if the character embodying the mentor role is still hanging around for the rest of the series.

You certainly could write a story where the mentor role persists through the whole story, but it probably wouldn't be very satisfying, since the hero then has the mentor crutch with him the whole time, instead of having to tackle the problem on his own. Which is probably why you don't see this happen very often.


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## JCFarnham (Nov 14, 2012)

Some thing that does come to mind is the BBC series Merlin. The mentor (Gaius) is still very much around and counciling the hero (Merlin). I haven't watched with an awful lot of interest, but it seems to me that they've engineered a reason why Gaius does nothing aside from expository remarks, and the odd healing. I believe this is because that while knowledgeable he isn't as magically strong as Merlin... Plus old and frail. There could very well be a convinient reason for all the action taking place away from camalot.

This proves something at the very least. If you do have a mentor figure around, he can't interfere. You can keep him around for sure but like in The Matrix, he needs to begin to fulfil another role. Or else draw the limelight.


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