SAY it isn’t so. Sometimes when we get to the end of a book we also come to the end of a character’s life. Someone whom an author has gone to great lengths to make sure we fall head over heels for over the course of a couple hundred pages. Someone we stay up late for, miss parties for, and even ignore social media for, and yet still they DIE. Here are the best characters literary greats did dirty. May their souls rest in the peace and quiet of library stacks.

If Romeo is the boy we want to end up with, Mercutio is his rakish, devilishly-charming friend who makes us think twice (even if for just a second). His death made that choice easy for us, and then Romeo had to go and die right after him. #bros

  • Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  • Sirius Black from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  • Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alexandre Dumas
  • Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Elizabeth
  • Jennifer Cavilleri from Love Story by Erich Segal
  • Boxer from Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • Algernon from Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  • Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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