Literature is Filled With Redshirts or Nver Stand Next to the Hero

   

  For whatever reason, Mercutio is my favorite character from Romeo and Juliet. Mercutio in my opinion is the best character from the play because his wit can cut you like a knife and his shade is extraordinary. The fact that I grew to love his character so much made it that much more difficult to come to terms with his death. This wonderful character had to die as a redshirt all because Romeo needed something to bring his anger to the next step. Most literary redshirts die to give the main character something to seek vengeance for. While this happens in books often, it also occurs in a lot of movies, shows, or video games.

        Foster’s explanation on our attachment to literary characters help bring some clarity to my emotions surrounding Mercutio’s death, but why did he have to die in the first place? Redshirts like Mercutio only have one purpose in their literary lives and that is to die solely for plot advancement. Foster makes it seem that these characters could die just for comic relief as well. Normally theses characters are close to our main hero, so their deaths send them into a bloodthirsty rage. Foster makes a really good example of Patroclus and Achilles. I imagine that while writing the Iliad, homer had to contemplate on ways to get Achilles his divine armor. The solution to this problem was simple. Kill his best friend. Not only did it cause Achilles to seek vengeance for his best friend, it also awarded him some cool new armor.

         Redshirts can be found everywhere in literature but they’re also all over the place in video games as well. These characters serve both the plot development and comic relief purpose Foster talks about. In Far Cry 3, you start the game following the main characters older brother around like a shadow. Grant Brody is after all much tougher, stronger, and way better at fighting than the main character Jason. His leadership skills and military background make your character, the still unproven protagonist, completely useless in comparison. You know what would help turn this whiney younger brother into a fierce island warrior? Killing his older brother. It also doesn’t help that Grant is actually wearing a redshirt. This leads me to believe that the writers knew exactly what they were doing when coming up with plot and story lines.

         Do the main characters always need to know these redshirts on a deep emotional level? No say the writers of books, movies, and video games. I doubt Hector knew the life stories of each charioteer he got killed. Yet they all died simply from being in his immediate area. Foster jokes that even an uninvolved bank president can get whacked for no true reason. The healthy guard in one of the Hitman games is a good example of death for comic relief. He’s standing in front of a window happily telling someone that he does not have testicular cancer and is destined to live a long healthy life. It doesn’t take a professor to guess what happens next. These characters are expendable and writers use them at their leisure, which can sometimes turn into the most memorable plot twist of a story.