Death of whomever...

[themiddleprince]

No current politics, fair enough.

But the death of an enemy: do we rejoice? As a child I wondered why we were expected to "give thanks" for a victory when very clearly it was the blood and muscle of fighting men (and occasionally women in the past, more openly now) that brought the victory, not the act of a god who let the slaughter commence in the first place. But perhaps the alternative to giving thanks is the whooping obscenity of crowing over the shattered bodies of the vanquished.

This is a literary forum, though - so, is it a difference between literature and popular fiction that in literature the hero must die with the villain? Holmes & Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls springs immediately to mind: is that the moment when penny fiction became literature?

[JuniperWoolf]

(and occasionally women in the past, more openly now)

Eh, women and children have always been raped and killed in military "victory."

[stlukesguild]

Literature is quite laden with examples of the hero vanquishing the "villain"/enemy and often celebrating the fact. You need only look to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, the Shahnameh, Orlando Furioso, and any number of other masterworks of literature. While most of the greatest writers throughout history recognized the suffering and tragedy inherent in warfare, the notion that there are no victors in warfare or that "we" are no different than the "enemy" we struggles against is not a manner of thinking that would have been embraced in the past.

[themiddleprince]

Eh, women and children have always been raped and killed in military "victory."

I meant women as fighters. As you say, as "collateral damage" they have always topped the lists.

[themiddleprince]

Literature is quite laden with examples of the hero vanquishing the "villain"/enemy and often celebrating the fact. You need only look to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, the Shahnameh, Orlando Furioso, and any number of other masterworks of literature.

I'm never sure of the Bible as literature, though it's far more worrying that the behaviour catalogued in the Old Testament is in any way held up as moral guidance, not least because of the sort of celebrations you mention, where the victory is a sign of righteousness. The same could be said of the classical works, where dialogue with and among the gods is intrinsic to the telling.

So perhaps it's a post-enlightenment, Man taking responsibility for his actions, thing...