Living Emotional Crutches in Literature.
- Darla's last surviving rabbit Jack becomes this in Ashfall after being traumatized by her mother's rape and murder. Despite previously keeping him as a meat rabbit, she responds negatively to Alex's insistence on leaving him behind, or his suggestions to butcher and eat him.
- The Beast from Beauty and the Beast (not the Disney version) tells Beauty that if she doesn't return to him within a set amount of time, he'll literally die of grief. When she stays just one day later, she receives a vision of him on the verge of death and rushes back to his side, at which point he promptly begins getting better, even before she breaks his curse by agreeing to marry him.
- The Butcher Boy: Joe is this to Francie, especially in the film. When Joe get's fed up with Francie's increasing psychotic behavior and becomes friends with Phillip, he snaps.
- Rosethorn is this for her student, Briar, in Circle of Magic. As of Battle Magic, it's clear that he is one for her as well: she very nearly breaks down completely when she realises that he's been injured. Although she's generally better at hiding it.
- Played very strangely in Lurlene McDaniel's Don't Die, My Love. Luke Muldenhower's the one with terminal cancer, but his girlfriend Julie is the one who clings to him and their relationship as her reason for living. When he dies, she pretty much shuts down emotionally and it takes a group effort to pull her out of it.
- The Dresden Files has a supernatural variation: White Court vampire Thomas Raith's girlfriend Justine is schizophrenic and prone to dangerous mood swings. By feeding off her excess emotions, he allows her to be fully functional without the side effects of medication. When separated from him for too long, her emotional instability returns and she becomes dangerous to herself and others. After Thomas becomes unable to feed off her or even touch her after a mutual Act of True Love, she eventually finds new medications that help her maintain a more healthy emotional state. Except it's revealed much later that the Eldritch Abomination subjecting her to More than Mind Control may have been behind this.
- Harry himself has his circle of friends that act as a stabilizing influence in his life, but especially the women he's romantically interested in and possibly Ebenezar McCoy. It's been proven multiple times that if they get hurt (or if they hurt him) he becomes... slightly less than stable. Gets turned up to eleven post-Changes, because he has to keep them around to combat the Winter Mantle's pull.
- Mouse gets certified as a therapy dog after Changes to help Maggie with her PTSD from being kidnapped and almost sacrificed by the Red Court. And being both very large and part celestial spirit he's a rather effective bodyguard too.
- In Earth's Children, Andovan became this to Echozar's mother once he began living with her and her son. This is understandable given that following all the tragedy and trauma Echozar's mother went through, Andovan was the only other person who showed her kindness and helped her. What's more, because of the way the Clan's Genetic Memory works, Echozar's mother was all but incapable of learning to hunt, making tools and weapons, or performing certain other tasks, so she relied on Andovan not just for companionship but to carry out tasks vital to their survival that she could not do. After Andovan died, Echozar says his mother quickly weakened and died too.
- In Forbidden, Lochan and Maya are this to each other.Only with Maya can I really be myself. We share the burden together and she is always on my side, by my side. I don’t want to need her, to depend on her, but I do, I really do.
- Diana is this to Caine in HUNGER, to the extent that when Caine thinks Diana is dead he actually asks his brother to kill him.
- As the books go on however, she mellows into a less influential crutch, and eventually in PLAGUE, Caine spends an entire book kicking the morality pet.
- In Heralds of Valdemar some lifebonded pairs consist of one troubled, brooding person with a great deal of angst and a strong Gift, and another who's less Gifted but more stable and supportive.
- Herald-Trainee Tylendel is this to a young Vanyel, in The Last Herald-Mage trilogy, though at the time Van has no powers and doesn't fit the usual pattern. He becomes Van's first and greatest love and the only one he can trust. 'Lendel does nothing to discourage this dependence, which is why things start to go south when his own sanity begins to slip. In fact, Van becomes Tylendel's crutch, but is too inexperienced to see the red flags and try to stop him. And then it gets worse...
- In Brightly Burning, Lavan has horrifyingly strong fire powers that respond so dramatically to his distress that he's completely unable to contain them. He's then Chosen by the Companion Kalira, who is also his lifebonded. Kalira's able to contain and control Lan's powers and also puts a lot of effort into supporting him as a person. She's also his Morality Chain. A few other characters are concerned by their bond, believing that Lan will never be able to be his own person or love anyone else. When Kalira dies, Lan completely snaps, loses all sense of morality, and tries to burn the world.
- The narrator of the poem How to love a girl who can't love herself
is one, and discusses the trope in verse three.But do not be the one to fix her—no, she
must be the one to do it herself, and you
merely are there to quietly encourage her. - At the beginning of The Hunger Games, Katniss's sister Prim is her Crutch. By the end of the series, Peeta pretty much replaces her.
- Patroclus can be interpreted as this for Achilles in The Iliad.
- In I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the sole woman Ellen acted as this for the rest of the group throughout their century of torment. She was the only one who was able to hold on to some semblance of hope without losing her mind, and comforted the others emotionally and physically while not holding their lashing out at her against them.
- Breq to Seivarden in the Imperial Radch novels. It's mentioned more than once that when Breq is busy on Athoek Station or otherwise away from the ship, Seivarden's issues with being a Fish out of Temporal Water and a recovering kef addict tend to resurface rather sharply.
- Jeeves is this for Bertie Wooster, who "rel[ies] on him absolutely" at all times and has actually suffered anxiety as to what he'd do if Jeeves ever left for good. When the Zany Scheme of the week separates them, the poor Upper-Class Twit has a breakdown and loses interest in everything. He does figure out how to dress himself, if only because Jeeves carefully packed all his clothes.I don't know when I've felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end of the wire said "Halloa!" five times, thinking he hadn't got me.
- In Les Misérables, Cosette is this to Jean Valjean. She's his only source of love and happiness, and when he's separated from her at the end of the novel, he wastes away and dies of grief.
- In The Machineries of Empire, while not technically living, Jedao seems to have taken it upon himself to keep Cheris mentally stable in face of War Is Hell, and pulls her out from the edge of a mental breakdown several times.
- In The Mortal Instruments, Stephen Herondale was implied to be this to his second wife Celine, to the point of her nearly committing suicide upon hearing of his death.
- In the light novel Of Dragons And Fae, Patricia is quite mentally stable...but the conditions of her Arranged Marriage mean that she must move to a far distant nation, filled with people who she doesn't know and who aren't even her species, and that she can only bring one human companion with her. While explaining the situation to her chosen companion (a hairstylist named Mayna), Patricia rather roughly states that Mayna's feelings about it don't matter: she needs someone to remind her of home, someone she knows she can trust.
- Jodi Picoult:
- Kate is this for her mother Sara in My Sister's Keeper.
- Willow is this for her mother Charlotte in Handle with Care.
- Archie Goodwin functions as something like this for Nero Wolfe; as Wolfe's personal assistant, Archie's pretty much the only reason Wolfe's carefully structured life functions as smoothly as it does, but he's also Wolfe's conscience when he feels Wolfe has crossed the line, and his snarky attitude works to motivate Wolfe into accepting work despite his laziness, preventing him from stagnating. Accordingly, despite the frequent tension between them Archie is one of the only people — if not the only person — Wolfe ever expresses any genuine regard for.
- To a lesser extent, Wolfe also returns the favour for Archie; most notably, in one novel Wolfe disappears without trace for several months, forcing Archie to open his own detective agency. He makes a point of noting that while he made more money than he ever made working for Wolfe, he found the work a lot less interesting.
- The father and son from The Road are described as "each the other's world entire" since they have no one else left in the post-apocalypse. The father freely admits that if the son were to die, he would join him, and the son gets separation anxiety whenever he has to be temporarily left alone.
- Darren was this to Steve in The Saga of Darren Shan, as he was his best friend and the only person he cared about. Needless to say, when Darren makes a deal with Mr. Crepsley to become a vampire in order to save Steve, he doesn't take it well and believes Darren has "betrayed" him. They become enemies for the rest of the book.
- The protagonist's mother in The Skin I'm In had her husband as her emotional crutch. When he died, she was absolutely miserable.
- Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse. The protagonist is an alien trying to break into a human-dominated medical profession. At one point he freezes up under pressure, then has an epiphany about this trope and realizes he needs to start relying on himself.Black Doctor Arnquist had been a crutch upon whom he could lean. Tiger, for all his clumsy good-heartedness and for all the help and protection he had offered, had been a crutch. Fuzzy, who had been by his side since the day he was born, was still another kind of crutch to fall back on, a way out, a port of haven in the storm. They were crutches, every one, and he had leaned on them heavily.
- In the Novelization of Star Wars Revenge Of The Sith, Obi-Wan and Padme are both this to Anakin, to a point. A point which diminishes steadily as the story progresses and he turns increasingly to Palpatine; even at the beginning, he saw and sometimes resented their influence. Without them — after he kills Padme and drives Obi-Wan irrevocably away — he turns into Darth Vader.
- Lucie in A Tale of Two Cities is the only thing between her father and solitary-confinement-induced insanity. He soon progresses from needing her presence to simply needing her happiness, but when her husband Charles falls under the shadow of the guillotine, that kind of backfires.
- Karan of The Three Worlds Cycle has an excuse for this — half-breed characters in this setting are prone to serious psychological issues, and as a Heinz Hybrid she shouldn't even be functional. Her friend/love interest Llian somehow manages to stabilize her, and when she's separated from him, things go badly, to say the least.
- In The Twilight Saga, Jacob is this, very much, to Bella during most of New Moon. Ever since falling in love, Edward and Bella have generally been this for each other.
- In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Addie is easily frightened and depends on Meryl to protect and calm her. She grows out of it when she has to save Meryl from the Gray Death.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
- Toto is this for Dorothy at the Grey World of Kansas:
It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.- It's implied that the reason Dorothy wants to go back to Kansas is to invoke this trope with Uncle Henry and Aunt Emma.
- Cathy was this for Heathcliff growing up amidst the abuse and prejudice of Wuthering Heights.
