Dumbest Literature Mistakes You've Made

What's the trope we have for the sunk-cost fallacy as applies to killing people and similar nastiness? Because yeah, Macbeth is pretty much that trope made flesh.

Macbeth is a tragedy. Shakespeare (and a lot of his contemporaries, though not all) didn't subscribe to Aristotle's theory of the tragic flaw. If your plot involved murders, ended in the protagonist's death, and usually involved royals or the nobility, it was a tragedy.

EDIT: I used to mix up H.G. Wells, Orson Wells and George Orwell, too.

EDIT EDIT: Orson Welles, not Wells. Doing it again.

edited 18th Jun '12 3:43:42 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I'd say that a hero making a tragic mistake is more important than them having a tragic flaw. Even my literature teacher thinks that the tragic flaw idea is bogus - they can have lots of flaws, the key part is that they're brought down by their own actions.

When I was younger, the only exposure I had to Ayn Rand and her ideology was Anthem, which I liked and agreed with (still do, actually, it's the only time I can stand Ayn Rand and at least part of her ideology). I also read 1984 and Animal Farm (I had a fascination with works about dystopia, which was the reason why I read Anthem), and since both are about an individual being forced to assimilate with an oppressive group, I made the mistake of believing that George Orwell and Ayn Rand would hit it off well and become fast friends if they ever met.

I remembered this mistake when my own sentence reminded me of the image of a boot stomping on a human face forever:

The reason why Anthem was luring and persuasive to me is because the only faces stepped on were the people trapped in that society, including the protagonist, who escaped the boot and in turn never stepped or felt the desire to step on anyone.

The little bit of Atlas Shrugged that I did read featured the protagonist's railroad company saying "ah, fuck them" when it turned out their exploits in Mexico were inconveniencing the impoverished in some way. I don't remember the details, but the boots of Ayn Rand's little band of heroes were stamping on those impoverished Mexican faces forever, and that disgusted me.

So in short, if Ayn Rand had to stamp on a human face forever in pursuit of her own goals, she would gladly do it, and only opposes face-stamping if it's her own face being stamped on. :(

At least she admits it's a philosophy of selfishness.

edited 12th Nov '11 10:32:13 PM by annebeeche

Now I'm imagining a hypothetical webcomic about speed-dates between authors of classic literature. :D

Don't restrict it to speed dates - now I really want to see a conversation between Bradbury and Tolkien, and Tolkien, at least, was pretty darn straight.

Morning or afternoon tea with Tolkien sounds nice. Or smoking a pipe around the fire.

If I met JRR Tolkien that would be one of the greatest days of my life.

I dunno about speed dating, but there's a series where Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkein have happy-fun adventures in a fantasy land together.

Even today I sometimes have a hard time keeping C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll straight in my head.

Really agree about Rand, she comes across as very poetic and intelligent in Anthem, but Atlas takes the "selfishness" to an extremity.

The thing is, in Anthem, the main character has selfless love for his girlfriend, and vows to go back to society and save other oppressed people.

Anyways, I read the Dune books by Brian Herbert first and then the ones by Frank Herbert. Oops.

That is sort of interesting, because I had the opposite reaction. I legitimately mistook Anthem for a parody of the dystopian genre until I had later read more about Ayn Rand and found out she was serious about that sort of thing.

The setup for the premise just seems so completely over the top, and I find that the amount of fear induced by a dystopian work is directly proportional to how plausible the premise is.

Haven't read Anthem, but the premise at least sounds more plausible than The Giver, and I loved the heck out of that book. Dystopia can work as a thought experiment just as well as it can work at being a Very Real Threat.

edited 29th Nov '11 10:33:51 AM by DomaDoma

I found the premise of The Giver to be quite silly. To pick on what's admittedly a small detail, why is making everyone super-colorblind easier than giving everyone black hair?

edited 29th Nov '11 10:41:14 AM by silver2195

Colorblindness is recessive, right?

But yeah, that's my point. The colorless world is more illustrative of the whole insulation idea than the implied background genocide would be.

Yes, but absolute (as opposed to red-green) colorblindness, which can nevertheless be overcome through sufficient emotion (!), and which has no other side effects, is a ludicrous contrivance.

Come on, I always thought the color blindness was something really stupid/impossible, but it wast mostly part of the premise, that's why I never gave it much thought. Similar to X-Men's superpowers. Completely impossible, but that's the point.

I always thought Lois Lowry was a man. I kept reading Louis/Lewis Lowry. Until I came to tvtropes and was shocked to see the author being adressed as "she".

When I was about seven years old I would always read Michael Ende R. Sounded pretty badass, and I honestly thought it was written like that. Now I want my crossover: Ende's Game.

I wish I lived in an English speaking country, just to go to the library and rent all the books you are talking about and which I have not yet read.

Rule of Symbolism. Or perhaps it's some sort of subliminal signal that affects the eye?

edited 29th Nov '11 4:59:44 PM by ElderAtropos

It's the symbolism, no question. And when symbolism is inherent to the story rather than going "HEY GUYS DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF JESUS OR WHAT", then it's a nice enhancer.

Speaking of Enders Game and back on topic, I first tried reading it when I was twelve and it probably would have affected my life as much as Harry Potter did, but for some reason I was completely thwarted by the fact that the thoughts weren't in italics.

"The little bit of Atlas Shrugged that I did read featured the protagonist's railroad company saying "ah, fuck them" when it turned out their exploits in Mexico were inconveniencing the impoverished in some way. I don't remember the details, but the boots of Ayn Rand's little band of heroes were stamping on those impoverished Mexican faces forever, and that disgusted me."

It gets much worse.

Heh, my literary mistake would be thinking people actually liked Stirling's Draka series, despite its flaws. Now it sits in my guilty pleasures section. I thought it was artistic.

I thought that The Reveal in The Kite Runner would be that Amir and Hassan were gay lovers. That sounds stupid, I know.

Just recently I confused Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth for Terry Brooks' The Sword Of Shannara, totally insulting the former by accident when I meant it for the later.

edited 5th Dec '11 3:06:43 AM by NoirGrimoir

They both deserve the criticism, though.

Elfstones of Shannara was miles better than Sword. Though the plot thread where they hold off the demons marked the first time I was actually desensitized to violence.

Wait, now I want to know if Sword of Truth was less about a sword of truth than Sword of Shannara was. That would be hilarious.

edited 5th Dec '11 8:36:11 AM by DomaDoma