Tragedy, when written well, is a writer's best friend. A good story isn't always written with sunshine and roses being thrown around by our protagonist. A good story is our protagonist hugging the person they loved while they die in their arms, or our main character dying trying to save their loved ones.
There are a ton of stories out there where characters that we fall in love with die. Finnick from the Hunger Games, Fred from Harry Potter, the list is never ending. The most recent movie adaption of a book that I have seen has one of these deaths. A death where the lead female character did her best to save the person she loved. She thought of ideas and took him on a grand adventure that ultimately did not change his mind.
I have read a lot of controversy over the movie adaption of the book Me Before You written by Jojo Moyes, because one of the main characters, Will Traynor, decides to take his own life while the other spent the entire book trying to change his mind. Although he fell in love with Louisa Clark, he states that nothing could have ever changed his mind, and that loving her was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
The reason behind the controversy is because the man that decided to take his life had an unfortunate accident that made him unable to use anything under his shoulders. He was a quadriplegic, and he couldn't handle it. Sometimes God doesn't make us as strong as we hope to be. I'm not saying that his choice wasn't a bad one, and I'm not saying that he took the coward's way out. But there are moments in our life where we feel as if there is nothing else for us.
The point that the author was trying to get across was that family and loved ones will be there for you until the very end, and you will know that they want the very best for you because they love you.
The point was not that he couldn't have lived because being a quadriplegic was something that was too extremely terrible and that all of the people that suffer from this should feel the same way. People living enjoyable and happy lives with this handicap can be seen more in the book. Louisa goes online and finds hundreds of people with the same handicap as Will that were willing to give Louisa support and advice to make his life better.
Will didn't simply die because of his handicap. He died because he was a stubborn man. Once he set his mind to something, there was nothing that could have changed it, and that is why Louisa wasn't able to "save him". Although his stubbornness followed him until the very end, he did have exponential character growth that helped Louisa see the world differently.
Not all good stories have happy endings, and it is the stories like this that leave an impact on you. They make you interpret things differently, and they make you want to be a better person, like Louisa. Her dedication to try to make Will smile is the sort of dedication that we need to see more of, and in the end it was definitely not all for naught. He reminds the character of that through a letter he wrote. He writes, "Push yourself. Don't settle. Just live."
