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Children are, unlike adults, unable to distinguish between reality and fiction. In The Best Death Ever this lack of sense of reality almost results in a boy losing his life. Because his friends cannot see that he is really dying instead of just pretending to.
The short story is told in first person by a narrator who looks back at his childhood. He narrates of a particular episode, when he and three of his friends were playing in his backyard in Netherley, Liverpool. They were playing a game called Best Deaths, in which the idea is to imitate one's death as convincingly as possible. The children are strongly inspired by war movies and war stories. The first one who is "dying" is Mick. He is running out from a coal bunker, and the other children shoot him with their toy weapons. The other children (the narrator, Stevie and Gavin) are not impressed by his death. Half-heartedly Mick just falls "over like a fart" because he does not want to fall and hurt himself "Well I didn't want to fall over on the floor an hurt meself" (p. line 5). Mick is probably the most grown-up of all of them because does not want to play a game, in which he hurts himself on purpose. Stevie on the other hand is much more cool, seen from a child's point of view. When he is staging his death he whacks his skull against some concrete flags, without being bothered by it. This toughness gives him great admiration from the other children, and he is regarded as the toughest one. The narrator tries to do better than Stevie, and it is this kind of peer pressure that develops into a game, which the children cannot control. They are always trying to be better and better, and this makes Gavin go to the limit just to get the other children's recognition.
Gavin is regarded as the stupidest and clumsiest of all of them. He does not like the other ones to be tougher than himself, for example when Stevie gives the narrator credit for his death. Instead of being cool he is being arrogant and calls the narrator's death for "Melodramatic" (p. line 11). This makes the narrator dislike him even more and it makes it even harder for Gavin to get the other's respect. In Gavin's attempt to do so, he tries to fake his own hanging, but he miscalculates the distance from the ground to the gallows and therefore he ends up hanging with his feet an inch above the ground.
What made him do such a stupid thing may be hard to understand when you are an adult, but children live in a world where reality and imagination are merged together. It is frightening that six-year old boys in these days knows so much about war, but it is easy to see from where they get their knowledge. They really over exaggerate their deaths as if they were in a war movie, and Mick, who makes the most realistic death, is by the others criticized of being unconvincingly. In addition to the war movies, the children also get their imagery from the news. For example from the conflict between IRA and UDA.
Order custom research paper on Analysis of the short story: The Best Death Ever by Niall GriffithsSome would say that all these war movies have bad influence on children, and they may be right. But it is still in the nature of boys, to play games in which they can get out their aggressions. In the animal kingdom it is normal for the small cubs to fight each other and thereby learn how to attack others and defend oneself. The same urge is in the human nature, and that is why the children play Best Deaths. It is a competition between the children of being the best and toughest one. In the animal kingdom the cubs is practising to be good hunters liker the elder animals. But the human children have not got any similar role models. Their fathers are not out hunting every day to get food on the table, and the closest the children can get to hunting is to play war games. The problem occurs when Gavin is about to die for real, but the other children still believes that it is a game. Even when the narrator's mother is saving Gavin from dying the other children does not understand that it has turned from imagination into reality. After having saved Gavin, the mother punishes the narrator by smacking him and confiscating his toy gun.
Instead of just punishing him, the mother should have learned him how tell the difference between real life and a game. The children must not learn that imagination and playing games, in which they can get out their aggressions, is a bad thing. Because it lies within the human nature to do such things. The power of imagination is great tool to have, however, you must be able to know when it is real.
Although it is a serious story, it contains some humour. For example the title of the short story The Best Death Ever has a touch of humorous irony. The title refers to the fact that Gavin in his attempt to fake a death almost ends up actually dying, which must best possible imitation of real death.
In the end of the story the narrator tells us that he was not impressed by Gavin's death, because "He had just had a stupid accident" (p. 4 line 40), and the narrator vows that he will die better than Gavin the next time they will play Best Deaths. But they never play the game again. The fact that the narrator wants to beat Gavin's death, tells us that he might have learned nothing from the episode, and reason why they did not play the game again is that they have been forbidden to do so. Or maybe did they learn that dying for real is not very funny after all…
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