Break the Cutie/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* David Wingrove's ''[[Chung Kuo]]'' has Sweet Flute, a young and innocent prostitute at a high-end brothel, who is sold as a concubine before she has time to toughen up. It does not go well for her, especially not after she has a child.

* Fantine from ''[[Les Misérables]]''. (Cosette, not so much, since her story is the inverse of this trope).

* In ''[[War and Peace]]'', [[Casanova|Anatole Kuragin]] does this to Natasha Rostov by seducing her into abandoning her marriage with Prince Andrei and running away with him. People manage to foil Anatole's plan, but she's never the same afterwards.

* ''[[Kingdom Rattus]]''' Tranah. Joins her brother's quest on a lark, {{spoiler|and sees everyone she knows and loves either die or turn out to have been lying to her her whole life}}. It gets so bad for her that at the end, {{spoiler|she swears that, given the opportunity, she would betray her own family.}}

* Frodo in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. [[Word of God|Tolkien]] even wrote a letter explaining that Frodo failed and can't be called a hero, that he was doomed to fail from the start ("he could not even throw the ring into his own fireplace!") and that his failure was in ''wanting'' to be called a hero, since nobody could have willingly destroyed the ring without divine intervention, and that the only thing that saved Frodo from [[A Fate Worse Than Death]] was his kindness to Gollum. The film version takes pains to emphasize Frodo's cuteness and [[Woobie]]-ness, but eventually turns Gollum into a pantomime villain in the third act, which sort of undermines the [[Anvilicious|original point]]... but Frodo ends up a broken shell of himself anyhow.

* The entire premise of [[Orson Scott Card]]'s novel ''[[Ender's Game]]''. The [[Boarding School of Horrors|Battle School]] teachers have a conversation early on, saying that although Ender is a peaceful child, he becomes extremely aggressive when up against his enemies. Since it is his aggression that they need, they decide that they will keep him constantly surrounded by enemies, until he will be forced to become the ruthless military mind that they need - basically [[Invoked Trope|invoking]] [[Beware the Nice Ones]].

* Water Lily of ''[[Wild Cards]]'' undergoes this in volume five, after {{spoiler|Ti Malice turns her into a junkie for his "kiss" -- direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure centres}}.

* The Mord-Sith from ''[[The Sword of Truth]]'' are a perfect example of this. The gentlest and kindest little girls of D'Hara are "broken" with three levels. The first level is to be tortured to the point of absolute obedience. The second level is to watch her teacher torture her mother to death. The third level is for her to torture her father to death. Talk about breaking to the extreme.

* The Marquis de Sade loved this, unsurprisingly. ''[[Justine]]'' is an entire novel devoted to this, and without even a hint of sympathy for the character. [[Squick]]!

* Darren Shan from ''[[The Saga of Darren Shan]]'' goes from being unwilling to even drink blood to {{spoiler|very nearly killing Darius, only stopping when he discovers he's his nephew.}}

* Most of ''[[A Little Princess]]'' is devoted to breaking Sara Crewe. From being the richest, cleverest, and most beloved student at her [[Boarding School]], she goes to a friendless and penniless servant after her father dies -- with the news delivered in the middle of her birthday party. The servants and especially Miss Minchin all try their best to break her from that point on. {{spoiler|Sara never breaks, but she does cool off and become much more distant and withdrawn, and almost breaks at one point.}}

* Morn Hyland of Donaldson's ''Gap Cycle'' begins the series as a barely of-age, beautiful young soldier. She is subjected first to "Gap sickness," then to violent sexual abuse (resulting in being impregnated by her repulsive, insane abuser), then to horrific psychological abuse, while possessing a brain implant with a remote control that could grant unspeakable power over her to any of the many sociopathic people around her if they were to get hold of it. Her son is "force-grown" to a young teenager and implanted with all of her memories (including being raped by his father), resulting in a multiple [[Mind Screw]] for him as well.

* Lev in ''[[Unwind]]''.

* Diana Mayo in ''[[The Sheik]]''. The titular character hates the English {{spoiler|because his father is actually an Englishman who was very abusive of his mother}}, and he kidnaps her and rapes her with the aim of breaking her just because he can. [[Values Dissonance|She later falls in love with him.]]

* In the backstory of ''[[Everworld]]'', the quiet and innocent girl Senda goes through this when [[Parental Abandonment|her mother leaves her]] with her biological father's family, all of whom either fear or hate her. This eventually results in her adopting, and ultimately becoming, the persona of the [[Emotionless Girl|cold]], controlling [[Witch Species|witch]] Senna Wales. In the meantime, she relieves some of her pent-up frustrations by messing with her half-sister, who is even more of a cutie.

* [[Jane Austen]]'s ''[[Mansfield Park]]'' is pretty much one long Break the Cutie plot. Poor Fanny -- just her luck that's she'd be the Austen heroine who gets the [[Darker and Edgier]]/more realistic story.

* In the book ''This Rag And Bone Shop,'' a little girl turns up murdered in the woods. The last person to see her was an older boy (the girl being his ''only'' friend in the world), the Cutie in this tale, and was interrogated by a [[Jerkass]] cop for ''hours,'' and forced through his horrible mind-games. After nearly an entire day passes, in which the cop practically [[Mind Rape|mind-rapes]] him, accuses him of killing his only friend, and doing a damn good job of breaking an already-cracked Cutie, the boy tearfully confesses to murdering her. {{spoiler|But the twist is, he ''didn't'' kill her; the girl's brother did. The poor boy is so utterly ruined and broken, reduced to a sobbing wreck by the end of the day, that he was willing to say anything to make it stop. The cop feels terrible guilt upon finding out, and seeing the boy's now-dead-looking eyes...and the end of the story has the boy thinking that if he's been called a murderer once, why not murder? And he takes a butcher knife from the kitchen, goes to the park...}}

* Hannah Baker from ''Thirteen Reasons Why''. Hannah suffers from a number of incidents, some minor (a friend blaming Hannah for unknowingly being used to get revenge on her, a guy she trusted stealing her poem and publishing it in his school newsletter, a boy spreading rumours that their relationship, which never went further than making out, was much more) and some major (failing to {{spoiler|prevent a rape}}, being sexually harassed and {{spoiler|later raped by the same person}}) which finally ends in her committing suicide.

* Some [[Sidney Sheldon]] leading ladies are broken souls.

** ''The Other Side of Midnight'' -- Young Frenchwoman Noelle Page comes from a poor family and is essentially sold by her doting father into serving as a dress shop owner's mistress; she runs away to Paris after conning the man out of some money, and loses what little she has with her thanks to a dishonest cabbie. While American pilot Larry Douglas gives her a place to stay and they become lovers, his promise to return to her when he's called away to England turns out to be a lie, and by the time she finds out about that she's pregnant...This turns her into an evil [[Gold Digger]] who chooses to devote her life to ruining his.

** ''If Tomorrow Comes'' -- Tracy Whitney is engaged to be married to one of the most eligible bachelors in Philadelphia, but then her mother commits suicide after being ruined by a mobster. Her attempt to right this wrong results in a near-rape, false accusations of attempted murder and actual theft, and -- thanks to a crooked lawyer -- a sentence that condemns her to a hellish prison for fiteen years. Her fiance turns his back on her, she has no family left, and she's pregnant...until an assault behind bars leads to a miscarriage ''and'' her being sent to solitary confinement. During her time there, she swears her [[Revenge]] on those who ruined her...

* ''[[The Sparrow]]'': Emilio Sandoz starts the book broken. The rest of the novel shows how he got that way.

* This was pretty much [[The House of Tudor|Charles Dickens]]' ''modus operandi'' in his books. Read ''Bleak House, Oliver Twist,'' or ''Great Expectations''. Even though his protagonists are living in a [[Crapsack World]], Dickens heaps progressively more manure on them and then creates a happy ending by having something ''mildly'' good happen to them, which in isolation looks like a massive copout.

* Lois Mcmaster Bujold has said that her plot generating device is "What's the worst thing I can do to this character?"

* The original ''[[Pollyanna]]'' invents the Glad Game to stop herself from breaking given that she's an orphan living with a grumpy spinster aunt. She eventually breaks when she loses the use of her legs. {{spoiler|She gets better, appreciating that she had legs and she is implied to learn to walk again}}.

* The God Mara from [[David Eddings]]' ''[[Belgariad]]'' series. He is the god of the Marags..maybe not a cutie, but a fairly benign god. He wakes up to find out that his entire race of followers have been raped and murdered by a neighboring nation. He proceeds to go into a [[God Mode]] version of BSOD. He snaps so hard that all he can do is stand there projecting the most gruesome aspects of what happened to his people... over his entire country...for thousands of years. Any normal human that ventures into his land are driven insane from his grief and horror. He only snaps out of it when it is learned some of his followers were sold into slavery and one of their descendants survives.

* [[Chaos Walking]]: Just about every main character at some point. {{spoiler|For Manchee it's a literal [[Break the Cutie]]}}

* Val's daughter Chris gets thoroughly broken in ''The Women's Room'', courtesy of a teenage rapist, and uncaring policemen and lawyers. She goes from a happy, precocious teenage girl to a frightened, miserable [[Broken Bird]] who gets terrified if her mother leaves the house, and can barely look her mother's friends or boyfriend in the eye. Eventually, Val sends her off to live with some friends on a commune. Chris is furious with Val, believing that her mother is abandoning her just when Chris needs her the most, and breaks off contact {{spoiler|(although she does attend Val's funeral).}} Sadly, {{spoiler|Mira}} never finds out what happened to her afterwards.

** Subverted in [[The Film of the Book]], where {{spoiler|Vika simply [[Plucky Girl|doesn't break]], instead causing the bullies (her "friend" first and foremost) to be deeply ashamed of themselves.}} Instead it's her friend who is broken by experience, though he does get a valuable lesson from it.

* ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' and its sequels are basically the story of how the main character went from being a cute, happy eleven year old to a young man waiting for death.

* In ''[[The Heritage of Shannara]]'', [[Big Bad]] Rimmer Dall does his best to break Par Ohmsford's mind so that he can bypass his mental and magical defences, and seize control of his body. It's not a pretty thing to watch, and it nearly works, with Par spiralling into near schizophrenic madness before the end.

** ''[[The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara]]'' cranks this up another notch. Over the course of the trilogy [[Heroic Wannabe]] Quentin Leah evolves into a broken [[Failure Knight]] with a [[Big Brother Instinct]] towards his cousin Bek, while Bek himself transforms from [[Nice Guy]] to [[Love Martyr]]. And then there's Ahren Elessedil. He starts out as [[The Unfavourite]] and a would-be [[Warrior Prince]], and by the end...? By the end his treatment at the hands of [[Complete Monster|Cree Bega]] has left him a mentally shattered [[Woobie]] with no self-esteem, no sense of worth, no real friends, and an inability to [[You Can't Go Home Again|ever go home]]. No wonder he becomes a {{spoiler|[[Death Seeker]] in the sequel}}.

* Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel "The Things They Carried" tells the story of an idealistic G.I. who decides to fly his sweetheart out to join him. She takes quickly to military life. So quickly, in fact, that she falls in with the Green Berets, losing herself to the realities of war and disappearing for days at a time on ambushes. She is last seen trekking alone into the mountains, {{spoiler|wearing a necklace of human tongues}}.