Sacrifice! Yay!

If it fits the story and the character I don't see many reasons not to do it. And I like characters that aren't afraid to go dark if they feel a need for it, and I know many others do as well. I say go for it!

The problem I see with sacrifice in the first place is that the "it's bad" conflict is centered on it.

We as human beings sacrifice millions of things everyday: Livestock and plants. We kill them so we can live. Some cultures, like some Native American tribes famously, honor the animals for their sacrifice by acts of reverence, using every part of the body, ceremonial dance, ect.. Nowadays we just outsource this and remove any emotional connection we might have. Meat is meat--not dead animals cut up into tiny pieces for us to burn over fire and boil in our bellies for fuel to live.

But then we move into ceremonial sacrifice, which starts to become frivolous to outside observers--then again, you can make the reader be a inside observer by establishing by this must be done. Must--as in it has to be done. Give me a monumental purpose and establish that sacrifice is the only way things can be fixed. For example, if the MC has to sacrifice their best friend (whom the reader loves) in order to end the war between two nations and it's the only way to do so, then do so. That's a heroic sacrifice and you can really play with that. Or even lesser, the MC has to kill off a dozen virgins so the gods can bring about rain for the crops and if rain doesn't come the whole nation will wither away because they've been in a bad drought, do so. But just don't have the MC murder cute baby lambs because its the annual affair for a literal trivial reason with a smile on their face.

If your MC kills an innocent person, they will lose the sympathy of your audience, unless you work *very* hard to make it seem it was their only choice. Your audience is not going to see your MC cut the heart out of some poor soul and go, "eh, different times, different mores." They are going to sympathize with the person who's being murdered, more than the murderer. People who wouldn't worry me.

Some things that were done in other cultures are now anathema to us. And that's not a bad thing. If you have a MC who raids villages, captures slaves and sells them in a marketplace, you'll lose sympathy. If you have a character who beats his spouse and his children bloody because that's what his culture allows, readers will consider him a jerk. You might, with skill, be able to "redeem" the character, but it will be difficult.

So, to answer your question, yes. I would probably at that point throw the book against the wall, or, in modern terms, hit "delete".

He's conflicted about the killing part

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Putting my reader hat on. I think if you show and tell this conflict enough, the character might still get an itty bitty bit of slack. Tears, nightmares, PTSD symptoms (or whatever they called it back then).

So what I think of sacrifice would be similar to what I think of most other deplorable actions by a main character: it depends

King David... or was it Solomon??? Anyway, there was a Judaic King who was a murderer and womanizer, but he's still a hero to many.

It's in the execution (in writing, no pun intended).

Good luck!

If it's simply part of the culture, why would your MC be conflicted about it? He believes in it, he does it, he should be fine with it.

If you're squeamish, make the people who are being sacrificed volunteers.

There are a fair number of religions that have sacrifices of some sort; although the good, old-fashioned animal sacrifices are not as common as they used to be.

Human sacrifices have been controversial in the past partly because many the Gods to whom the sacerifices were made were also controversial, but the idea of slaying people to please the Gods was not universally accepted. Odin took most of His sacrifices in war, but there was Ba'al-Hamon who took children, and that was not universally accepted in that time.

I don't mind reading about sacrifices, and I am thinking of trying to bring back sacrifices to some of the ancient Gods.

I wrote a (non-fantasy) mystery story that revolves around an ancient Egyptian human sacrifice, with the priest who commits the sacrifice as the protagonists, for The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits. You can read a substantial part of the story--a couple of opening scenes, which include the sacrifice--here:

http://www.noreen-doyle.com/fiction/excerpts/exExecration.html

We don't actually know for sure that Ba'al-Hamon took children, but it's certainly one of the most popular depictions of human sacrifice, and in the stories revolving around it, both the Hebrews and the Romans decry Phoenician "child sacrifice" as an abomination. Or at least, modern interpreters of ancient texts say they did.


Personally, I'm not opposed to human sacrifice by main characters (or secondary characters), as long as its either by an anti-hero/interesting-but-evil-protag or it's in a context such as volunteer or culture-centric sacrifice for very important purposes.


A fantasy project I was working on about half a year ago was based incredibly strongly on human sacrifice: heroes or very pious people were buried alive to become sort of demi-gods, in order to protect their people from attack.(It's a lot more complex than that, but that's the basic idea.) The world itself is also rather dark--sort of a mix between the recently popular "gritty" fantasy and more traditional high fantasy. The main characters themselves never sacrifice anyone in that way, but they do have friends or family or acquaintances who are thus sacrificed, and nobody considers it wrong or evil. (They also occasionally sacrifice prisoners of war, which I suppose is on shakier moral ground from our perspective.)


I think it's absolutely possible to have characters practice forms of human sacrifice and still be likeable/relatable, or at least interesting enough to carry a story, although if you want to go the likeable route, you're probably in for more of a challenge.

The main character in Jim Butcher's book Changes, part of The Dresden Files series, performs a human sacrifice, and he doesn't become irredeemable. The author goes to some pains to set this up, however.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: Highlight the text below if you want to read on. However, what I've written below completely spoils the climax of the book.
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The protagonist is a wizard trying to stop a Mayan vampire cult from killing everyone in his family via a "bloodline" curse. The curse is set up such that if the vampires sacrifice the protagonist's daughter, it's going to wipe out everyone she is descended from, including the protagonist and a few other powerful wizards who are trying to stop the vampires.

Meanwhile, the daughter's mother has been bitten by one of the vampires, but she won't turn into one until she drinks blood. She's been fighting the urge to do so for six years and has already asked the protagonist to kill her if she ever does turn into a vampire.

During the climactic battle, in order to save her daughter from the sacrifice, the mother does rip someone's throat out. She turns into a vampire. The protagonist is there, and the bloodline curse is already set up. The mother, now turned into a monster, still retains enough control to crawl up on the sacrificial altar and lie down ready to take her daughter's place.

Because the mother is the youngest vampire, if the protagonist sacrifices her, the bloodline curse will wipe out all the vampires, and there's basically no other way for him to get his daughter out alive. They're surrounded by an army of vampires fighting to get to them.

The protagonist does it, but the author is very careful to make sure the reader knows how devastated the protagonist is by having to kill a former lover and the mother of his child.
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So by carefully setting up both regret on the part of the protagonist, absolution from the victim, and necessity to protect the innocent, the author successfully had his protagonist perform a human sacrifice and not lose the reader's empathy.


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Animal sacrifice: ''NOOOO, SAVE THE GOATS, DAMMIT.'' (I'll take animals over people any day, so I get twitchy.)

Adult sacrifice: ''This is sad and presents an interesting moral quandary. Let me read on to see how it is handled.''

Child sacrifice: Has to be done exceptionally well and there better be a ton of regret and guilt, because I work with kids and I start picturing my students when I read about tiny humans.


Generally, I'm all right with it. Unless the MC was sacrificing them in bits and pieces over days and days or something equally barbaric, because even I have my gore limits.

StarryEyes said:

I agree. As for bringing sacrifices back (forgive the stupid question), do you mean in fiction or in real life?

I'm a Hellenic polytheist and I know people who are in fact in favour of bringing back sacrifice, so…

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In the real world. Dyeus Pater forever.

The Mayans did have style when it came to human sacrifice.

It's an interesting question. And yes, we accept all kinds of sacrifices of innocents, even innocent humans, when we feel that there's a greater good that will come of it.

War is a great example. There are others as well. We all make choices every day, trade offs. We're not evil, just realistic

The difference is that with ritual sacrifice, the act is right there, often witnessed by members of the community. It's not hypothetical or something happening far away in a place most of us never see.

We normalize what we see all our lives. If any of us lived in the Mayan or Aztec empires, we'd likely be pretty comfortable with human sacrifice, or at least regard it as a necessary evil.

So how do you present that milieu to a modern reader in a way that makes sense to them, even if it also disturbs them? Showing the state of mind of the participants. Their rationalizations and so on. What if the condemned person is a prisoner of war? What if they're a criminal? What if they've chosen to be "honored" in this manner?

With animals, it's not so rough for most readers if it's a food animal (like a cow or goat) and there's some kind of ritual feast after. Even if it's not eaten, it's not such a step to go from slaughtering a pig or cow for a god and slaughtering it for food (all but the most avid vegans are probably comfortable with meat-eating characters in fantasy and historical fiction).

Sacrificing the kind of animal we don't think of as being "for food" would be harder. Dogs, cats, even horses.

I think the hardest portrayal would sacrificing a child. Even if the child's primed and prepared and goes willingly because they honestly believe they're a messenger to a god (and that's the actual reality of the story too), modern people don't think of kids as someone who can give informed consent for something like that.

I don't know the answer there, except to accept that modern readers will find it horrifying and to present it as a dilemma, even to the people involved. Show the range of emotions experienced by the people involved in the ceremony (I can't for a moment believe that the parents of a chosen child sacrifice didn't grieve, even if they also believed it was an honor and their child was a messenger to their gods who would live in an afterlife). But it's likely a different kind of grief.

And accept that some people may not be able to handle your book, no matter how you deal with it. And that's their right.

Marlys said:

If it's simply part of the culture, why would your MC be conflicted about it? He believes in it, he does it, he should be fine with it.

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My thoughts precisely

If you set it up that this is part of the culture, that everyone accepts it (even if they aren't happy when it's their sister or whoever) then I think you're Ok. In fact, for me it would be a stellar example of not imposing our mores onto another culture.

That said...

Little Anonymous Me said:

Child sacrifice: Has to be done exceptionally well and there better be a ton of regret and guilt, because I work with kids and I start picturing my students when I read about tiny humans.

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Child sacrifice may be going too far

I actually had an animal sacrifice in an old book. There was some consternation among my betas (did you have to kill the horse?) but it was right for the culture I was trying to portray, for the character -- who wasn't supposed to be sympathetic -- and for the book. I basically fridged a horse....

Execution will also make a HUGE difference. You could write the scene where he does the sacrifice and I'd be OK with it as detailed above. And you could do it where I would fling the book

But that goes for a lot of stuff.

Think hard about what this scene is supposed to achieve, how it adds to the book, or he character. Then write it. Get some betas to look it over.

It could work. But it'll be hard

PS it might help if your MC notes that the sacrifice is "necessary" but he acknowledges how hard it is for the family? Unless ofc they get extra kudos or something

I just read a successful fantasy novel where cannibalism is an accepted fact of life by characters who are sympathetic. Now, these are people who just so happen to be dead for another reason (weren't slaughtered just for food), and there's a reason for me. But it still gives me a bit of a squick to read. Not enough to put the book down, though, or make me hate the characters.

Maybe some readers would be different, though.

Roxxsmom said:

I just read a successful fantasy novel where cannibalism is an accepted fact of life by characters who are sympathetic.

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Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley?

And if so, yeah! It was doubly weird because those characters were vegetarians otherwise.

Mr Flibble said:

Child sacrifice may be going too far

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I had initially intended to say that was a book slammer. But then I thought of Lolita, and I would have said that was a book slammer before I read it. So I'm going to agree with the rest of your post and say it's all in the execution.

Show that your character really, really believes that the sacrifice is necessary, and that he believes it will work. Trouble is, you're going to have to show him as religious the rest of the time. He can't just be a believer for the moment.

In how many fantasies (and historical novels, for that matter) do the characters only do anything religious if there's a ceremony up at the place of worship, or they have to break into the Temple of Doom? No regular services, no automatic prayers in time of trouble, no little private rituals. Just one big showy scene, generally not requiring any piety by anyone. Not even 'Oh, god, let me make this cut accurately'.

StarryEyes said:

one of my MCs (a religious leader) who has to hold the dagger. He's conflicted about the killing part,

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Given that's the cultural norm, why would your character be conflicted?

Did he grow up somewhere else? Did the gods send him a vision?

Atomik Aztex had a LOT of human sacrifice both alluded to and shown on screen, and it was treated very blithely and in a run-of-the-mill style manner because, to the protagonist, it was a part of life and barely worth his notice.

... but in that book you're pretty dissociated from the "protagonist" anyway, and he's not a particularly sympathetic in any sense of the word.

Dave Williams said:

Did the gods send him a vision?

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The Pawnee had some form of human sacrifice, but it was stopped in the 1830s by a Pawnee warrior who had a vision.
at least that's one version of what happened.

As for something being a "norm" and "okay" -- that sort of obviates the whole point of human sacrifice which is that it is an anti-normative excess designed to impress and intimidate. The Aztecs seem to have understood this perfectly well, though they didn't consider the potential backlash in the political realm of trying to make it more normative. For the Maya -- first of all, they didn't go anywhere near as far as the Aztecs since they had no emerging empire to justify and inflict and second sacrifice for the Maya seems to have been more closely connected to dynastic defeat in war rather than in keeping the universe running like a well-oiled empire.

Marlys said:

If it's simply part of the culture, why would your MC be conflicted about it? He believes in it, he does it, he should be fine with it.

If you're squeamish, make the people who are being sacrificed volunteers.

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I'm conflicted about many things that are normal parts of my culture, even things I accept as necessary or better than the alternatives. And I don't agree with everyone else I know about what's good or necessary either, even within my own family. I've never understood why we modern writers assume people were hiveminds in the past.

Roxxsmom said:

I'm conflicted about many things that are normal parts of my culture, even things I accept as necessary or better than the alternatives. And I don't agree with everyone else I know about what's good or necessary either, even within my own family. I've never understood why we modern writers assume people were hiveminds in the past.

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While this is true, if someone has been brought up in a culture there is no reason they "have" to be conflicted about it. (they may very well be conflicted about the people in it)

And inflicting modern moral sensibilities on say another world/time...yeah if it's too in my face/out there, I'll get annoyed

Of course, it's all in the execution. But if someone is saturated in a sacrifice culture and has OMG modern moral sensibilities about it....it's going to feel off.

Unless they have conflicts that seem sensible/reasonable or at least understandable for the culture* conflicts, it's not going to seem real


* understandable due to the culture one has been brought up in is not the same as understandable to you and I. Cultures across this world see things very differently. And may have very different ideas on what is acceptable, or how they conflict with it. It should ...fit. The character, the culture. But we tend to default to our culture, unless we make a concious effort not to (not always, but tend to)