You Shall Not Pass/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

  • Named for Gandalf's big scene against the Balrog (no, not THAT Balrog, or THAT Balrog) of Moria in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
    • In the book, however, Gandalf's line was "You cannot pass". It is said in the movie, just before the above quote - just not as loud. However, in the book he does "cry aloud" while smiting the bridge.
      • Also, in the book he does it twice. The second time, he prevents the Witch-king from riding into Minas Tirith when the main gate is breached, with a completely still "You cannot enter here." This doesn't culminate in a duel however since just at this moment, the Rohan reinforcements arrive. A similar scene is included in the extended version of the Return of the King film.
      • Thrice. Just prior to the bridge scene he had stayed behind briefly to magically seal a door. The Balrog broke the spell but collapsed the roof, forcing it to go the long way to catch up.
    • Dernhelm's (a.k.a. Éowyn's) defense of Théoden King against the Lord of the Nazgûl (who seems very confident of his own ability to crush Gandalf like an insect) is mayhap even more impressive: "Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may." She even laughs at him.
      • "For living or dark undead I will smite you if you touch him!"
    • Boromir telling the hobbits to flee and then building himself a funeral mound of orcish corpses probably qualifies as well.
    • Beregond leaves his post in order to pull one of these to stop Denethor from succeeding in lighting Faramir's pyre.
    • There are so many instances of this in The Silmarillion that one can safely conclude Tolkien loved this trope.
      • Húrin, the father of Túrin Turambar, pulls this off against the entire army of Morgoth alone so his allies can escape. He fights to the point where his axe melts on his hands and even then does not give up. All the while shouting: "Day shall come again."
      • Finrod Felagund breaks out of his chains and kills a Werewolf barehanded to save Beren.
      • Huan, the hound of Valinor, stands up against Carcaroth, the mightiest werewolf who has a Silmaril in its body, in order to protect Beren. Huan manages to slay the crazed werewolf before succumbing to wounds but Beren dies nonetheless. This only occurs because Beren was trying to protect Lúthien against Carcharoth in yet another invocation of this trope. Waving a Silmaril in a badass werewolf's face will cost you your hand, however.
      • During the sack of Gondolin, Ecthelion, a high-elf lord, defends a wounded Tuor against Morgoth's chief captain Gothmog. Ecthelion manages to take down the Balrog before he dies, after losing both his arms[1]. Glorfindel also killed a Balrog (and was killed) while the survivors were fleeing in the mountains.
      • Subverted during the Flight of the Noldor when Feanor is leading his people from Tirion. A messenger from Manwe appears and tries to oppose their departure (into certain death no less), but Feanor is the more powerful of the two and convinces them to depart all the same: "In that hour the voice of Feanor grew so great and potent that even the herald of the Valar bowed before him as one full-answered, and departed; and the Noldor were over-ruled."
    • Parodied in Bored of the Rings when the Fellowship actively chop down the rope bridge with Goodgulf and the Ballhog on it.
  • The event referenced in one of the Vlad Taltos books where Sethra Lavode compares the tactics of defense to being a real estate agent (i.e. get as high a price as possible for any ground lost) to her apprentice, Sethra the Younger. In a battle a few days later, Sethra the Younger offers to retreat from her strategically-important pass if the enemy commander will send a third of his force, unarmed, through to the prison camps behind her lines. He refuses, and gets his behind handed to him in the ensuing assault.
  • In Robert Jordan's The Great Hunt, Ingtar, having been revealed as a Darkfriend, redeems himself by holding off the advancing Seanchan at the cost of his life, allowing Rand and his compatriots to escape.
    • An awesome example in the Breaking: When Jaric Mondoran, a maddened sorceror with the power to devastate whole districts, approaches Tzora the Da'shain went to meet him, ten thousand of them, and began to sing to remind him what he once was, and give the (at least) hundreds of thousands of people living in Tzora time to escape. He looked at them puzzled while burning them alive one by one. They closed their ranks and kept singing. He listened to the last one for over an hour. After that the second largest city in the world burned, leaving only a sheet of glass.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Rogue Squadron, Rogue Squadron and Defender Wing are ambushed by a type of capital ship designed to slaughter large numbers of starfighters. With a little cleverness, Corran Horn works out a scenario to distract, damage, or destroy it it so that the others can get away -- "Worst case, you lose one ship." Not only did it work, Horn and his ship survived.
    • It happens again later in the series, when Rogue Squadron is lead into a deathtrap at Distna, One and Two flight (eight X-wings) are forced to fight three squadrons of enemy fighters, while Three flight is forced to take on the same number (with half as many ships) so that the others can attempt to escape. "Alright three flight, we're holding the door open." Delaying Actions are standard for the Rogues; they pull one in The Thrawn Trilogy and are only saved when the cavalry returns.
    • In the Star Wars: New Jedi Order novel Traitor, the Jedi Ganner Rhysode declares, "Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass." and proceeds to slaughter hundreds of enemy warriors before being overcome, buying time for Jacen Solo. When he's finally overwhelmed, he pulls a Samson by collapsing the (large) building he's in on both himself and his foes. In fact he was so damn impressive that, according to Unreliable Narrator, in the future he would be made into a deity in the enemies' pantheon called "The Ganner", an invincible giant armed with a sword of light, guarding the gate to the world of the dead, upon which is inscribed -- in Basic, not Yuuzhan Vong -- NONE SHALL PASS.
      • In Legacy of the Force, Wedge Antilles has to scramble for impromptu designations for himself and Corran. Since they're flying a delaying action, he chooses Ganner One and Ganner Two. What could be more appropriate?
    • Death Star has the Force-Sensitive stormtrooper Nova Stihl repeatedly Dreaming of Things to Come, and one dream is of he and one other fighting off his fellow stormtroopers, and dying, while trying to buy time for others. He manages to avoid something from another dream, but for this one, he goes along with it and delays the other stormtroopers long enough that his little cell of Imperials going through a Heel Realization can escape.
  • In the Honor Harrington novels having Harrington go into battle in a seriously outmatched ship with practically no possibility of victory and massive casualties happened frequently enough in the early books that an "Honor Death-Ride" has become cliche (and to be fair, is noted by various characters in the books themselves such as in Honor Among Enemies when several crewmen, upon finding out who's commanding their new ship, immediately begin figuring out how to desert before the inevitable catastrophic battle).
    • Of course, the ones doing that are dirtbags that their former commanders couldn't wait to be rid of. Their eventual fate was a rather more literal variety of Laser-Guided Karma. Or, in this particular case, graser guided karma.
    • Edward Saganami's You Shall Not Pass moment got Manticore's version of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis named after him. They also show his final battle to the graduating class every year.
    • Honor's armsmen live (or rather, die) for this trope. Given the number of people that try to kill her, Honor gets through rather a lot of them, much to her regret.
  • Also by David Weber in the Hell's Gate series you have "Chunika s'hari, Halian. Sho warak", or "I am your son, Halian. I remember." Archaic words said by the Imperial family when invoking their precognition. It takes only 20 years to make an emperor, but 20 centuries to make an empire the world can trust. For many members of the family, their precognition is weak except in the circumstances of their immediate death. For them to make this proclamation means they will die in their actions, but their death will hold the line.
  • In Mercedes Lackey's and James Mallory's The Obsidian Trilogy, and specifically the first book, The Outstretched Shadow, Jermayan tells Kellen the story of five scouts from the last war with the Endarkened, who held an entire demon army in a narrow pass for three days, buying time for the allied armies to gather. "History" lost their names (even though there are elves living who are so old they are no more than two generations from the time of the last war, thousands of years ago), and it's not known how they did it, but their sacrifice is remembered.
  • In the old pre-revision Magic: The Gathering novels, a Viking-ish female captain (a lesbian with two wives, no less) named Ordando faces down cavalry in an alleyway to buy time for the general of her army and the rest of their small infiltration party to escape.
  • In H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, the ironclad torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child attacks several Martian tripods to buy time for British refugee ships to escape. The Thunder Child is utterly destroyed, but the refugees get away and it manages to off one of the tripods in the process by ramming it.
  • In the original Dune book, Duncan Idaho sacrifices himself to hold off a flood of Imperial Sardaukar elite troopers, while Paul Atreides makes good his escape. In the sequel, it's revealed that while he did, indeed, die, the surviving Sardaukar were so impressed with his Implausible Fencing Powers that they preserved his body, later having it resurrected as a "Ghola"... and that, as it turns out, has some extremely far-reaching effects on the Dune universe.
  • In Jim Butcher's Codex Alera novel Cursor's Fury, the hero, Tavi, has to hold a bridge against a massive invading army with an inexperienced, under-equipped, and badly-outnumbered Legion (6 thousand Legionnaires against sixty thousand invaders). He very nearly has to sacrifice himself and a cohort of his legionares to hold off the invaders, and although he survives, the fact that he actually declares, "You will not pass," to the leader of the invading army makes it worth mentioning as an example.
    • A massive invading army of eight-foot-tall berserker wolf-men, which simply adds a whole 'nother level of badassery to the act.
      • And the fact that he pulls it off and manages to send them into retreat makes it all the more impressive.
  • In His Dark Materials, book two, when Lee Scoresby stays behind in a ravine and holds off 25 elite soldiers with a battered old Winchester rifle.
    • Also a Rasputinian Death because of how many times he was shot and how long it took him to finally die.
  • In John Barnes's One for the Morning Glory, how the Twisted Man died.
  • In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Sergeant Blane and fifty Ghosts hold off the vastly superior numbers of Jantine Patricians for a long time, even in face of their Zerg Rush, until they are overwhelmed.
  • In Harry Potter, there's a charm that works just like this. If you protect someone with strong will, and die for them, then your sacrifice will fuel a charm -- making your protected ones completely immune from direct harm from the one that killed you. That's how Harry survived the Death Spell from Voldemort (by having his mother inadvertently cast this charm), and later, in the last book, how Voldemort's curse became ineffective against Hogwarts' students (by Harry's Heroic Sacrifice).
  • The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean (variant with wounded guy).
  • Rockjaw Grang in the Redwall novel "The Long Patrol", after being fatally wounded. He manages to kill over twenty Mooks before he finally dies.
    • Also Bragoon the otter and Sarobando the squirrel from Loamhedge, similar to Gandalf's example, threw a log that was bridging a canyon down said canyon while foes were scrambling across it, to save the three young ones that were with them. Being pretty old, they died of exhaustion shortly afterward.
      • Also also, Felldoh the squirrel in Martin the Warrior was probably the first example of this in the writing of the books. He takes down at least twenty enemies and scares the rest enough that after he's dead, the rats are talking about later basically saying "thank GOD we didn't get to him in time!"
  • In the Wing Commander novel "Fleet Action", a vastly outnumbered and outgunned Confederation manages to hold off the Kilrathi fleet, at one point having civilian craft play "human shield" for the Marine landing craft to board the Hakaga supercarriers, to detonate antimatter mines from the inside, where the heavy armor not only didn't help the Hakagas, but helped focus the blast to gut the ships from the inside.
  • "Gunny" Pappas, in the Posleen War Series book When the Devil Dances, holding off the Posleen, and the ACS troopers who were too damaged to move did this, while the rest of the force retreated for resupply.
  • In William King's Warhammer 40,000 novel Space Wolf, Sergeant Hengist rallies a group of young Marines about him to hold off attacks from Chaos Space Marines, sending off a handful, led by Ragnar, to Bring News Back. When a Chaos Space Marine tell Ragnar that the group had broken and the Chaos Space Marines were hunting them down, Ragnor refuses to believe him.
    • In Lee Lightner's Wolf's Honour, two veteran units hold off the rebel attack long enough for the rest of the Imperial Guard to reach the fortified perimeter; they die to the last man.
  • In Raymond Feist's Darkness at Sethanon, Laurie's friend Roald holds off approaching Dark Elves after he breaks his leg in a fall. He tells his friend to "Make a song about me, Make it a good one", before he gives a decent accounting of himself, allowing his friends to escape.
  • In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Red Fury, all the sons of Sanguinius throw themselves into defending the tomb of Sanguinius, knowing that if they fail, the survivors' only choice will be to be destroy the fortress.
  • Happens in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. When Zhang Xiu ambushed Cao Cao, Dian Wei remained behind to hold the main gate against Zhang's forces. Because his usual weapon was stolen, Dian Wei instead used a normal infantryman's sword until it broke, at which point he used a pair of normal infantrymen. Not surprisingly, even after he died the enemy were still terrified of passing the main gate.
    • Zhang Fei, a warrior in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, managed to pull this off single handedly against an entire army. It was a bit different, though, as there was no actual fighting, just a very tense stand-off where the opposing commander Cao Cao was so taken aback by the audacity of a single person trying to hold off an army, that he figured that it was an attempt to lure him into a trap. Once Zhang Fei yelled, however, all bets were off, and the entire army... ran away.(Ironically, Zhang Fei had a bunch of followers raising clouds of dust to make it look like an ambush would be waiting if Cao Cao's army advanced, although it's shown that while the advance elements was stalled by that 'poorly disguised ambush' it was Zhang Fei himself that scared Cao Cao.)
    • Not to forget Zhuge Liang, who single-handedly held off Sima Yi's army with an empty city and his own reputation.
  • Bigwig in Watership Down has one of the best Shall Not Pass moments in literature.

Bigwig: "My Chief Rabbit has told me to defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here."

    • This doubles as a Badass Boast by proxy; the attacking rabbits, accustomed to a hierarchy of physical force, conclude that Bigwig's Chief Rabbit must be even bigger and badder than he is. They are appropriately shaken, although Bigwig is quite unaware of it.
    • A Thanatos Gambit as well: Bigwig figures that even after they kill him, they'll have to dig around his corpse.
  • In World War Z, a man relates the story of how the zombie war went down in Paris, including how his brother's unit attempted to contain the inmates of an insane asylum that had been zombified:

One squad against three hundred zombies. One squad led by my baby brother. The last thing we heard before the radio went silent was his voice on the radio: "They shall not pass!"

Voro 'Mantakree: And now, Demon, you die.
Kurt Ambrose: Die? Didn't you know? Spartans never die. (detonates FENRIS nuclear warhead)

  • In Henry Zhou's Warhammer 40,000 novel The Emperor's Mercy, Imperial Guardsmen are surrounded by Chaos forces and are fighting on, despite dying of hunger and disease. Roth tells Celemine that they had no choice but to stay with them. The commander hears and instantly wants to fight a last charge: they can get them to their ship and hold off the enemy -- and that way, they can be remembered. (They are. In fact, their eighteen minutes defense of the ship is immortalized in a mural on Terra.)
  • In Toby Frosts third Space Captain Smith book, Wrath of the Lemming men, Agshad nine-swords single-handedly wins the battle of Tam Valley, defending the bridge from an army of bloodthirsy Yullian soldiers using only his broom before he is finally felled by a sneak attack from Colonel Vok.
  • Done twice in the web original The Salvation War. The first, in Armaggeddon??? has a group of retired Chinese soldiers using bolt action rifles and then bayonettes, to hold off a demon from slaughtering the women and children of their town. The second is in Pantheocide when a Palestinian suicide bomber takes his jeep full of explosives to attack The Scarlet Beast and the Whore of Babylon as they ravage Jerusalem. Limited in it's success, it's still the first thing that actually hurts them... When he arrives in hell (everyone goes there), several women offer themselves to him.
  • The Swedish-language Finnish poem The Tales of Ensign Stal contains a classic and rather interesting example of this. The poem at one point tells the story of the brave but increadibly stupid soldier Sven Dufva who, in the middle of a battle against the Russians during the Finnish War (1808-1809) missunderstands an order to retreat and instead attacks the enemies in front of him. He singelhandedly manages to hold a bridge untill reinforcments can arrive, sacrificing his life in the process.
    • The quote "Släpp ingen djävul över bron" (in modern English roughly "Don't let a single fucker cross that bridge") has been a go-to phrase in Swedish for holding out against overwhelming odds ever since. Though the bit about simply being too stupid to retreat usually gets left out.
  • The Backstory of John C. Wright's The Golden Age: Helion sacrificed himself on the Solar Array to contain a solar storm. As he thought. It was actually an attack.
  • A fairly common way for Bolos to go. The Legacy of Leonidas is Thermopylae In Space.
  • Umslopogaas dies defending a staircase against a small army at the climax of Allan Quatermain.
  • A bit of Backstory in one of Andre Norton's Alternate History books, The Crossroads of Time, mentions that after World War II went really, really bad for the Allies, and "Japs exploded all over the Pacific," the last word the U.S. got from Australia was that "they were still fighting a desperate rear guard action along the salt deserts there...." That was in late 1940 or early '41; the hero gets this information something like ten or fifteen years later.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Beyond the Black River," Balthus sends off the settlers and realizes the Picts will catch them. He invokes this trope and dies.
  • Almost all of Jair's companions in The Wishsong of Shannara die this way, staying behind one or two at a time to delay the Gnomes and other enemies that are chasing them.
    • This is how Elven Hunter Crispin goes out in The Elfstones Of Shannara. With all his companions dead, Crispin holds the bridge at the Pykon against The Reaper, a Demonic Serial Killer in order to give Wil and Amberle time to destroy the bridge. Easily his Dying Moment of Awesome.
  • In Alexandre Dumas' The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, Porthos destroys the tunnel network that he and Aramis are using to plot a rebellion against the King of France, buying Aramis and the rebels enough time to escape and destroying most of their pursuers.
  • Done agains an object, but otherwise the same in Distant Rainbow by Strugatski brothers. When the Wave suddenly overpowers most of "Charibdas" (wave-stopping machines), causing them to explode and starts advancing rapidly at the scienific outpost, Robert takes one of the two remaining Charibdas and steers it against the Wave so the other scientists can evacuate. He escapes the machine seconds before it blows up, along with Patrick, who steered the other one.
  • In Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive The Hero Kaladin Stormblessed does this against an army of Parshendi at the end of the book to save Dalinar Kholin, The Fettered, and the last honorable High Prince left in the entire Alethi army. It is easily the best battle scene in the entire book. The Best Part? Kaladin Lives and gets his freedom.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire, Syrio Forel holds off five Lannister guardsmen and a knight of the Kingsguard with only a wooden sword to buy time for Arya to flee. He actually kills the lightly armored Lannister guards, and is only defeated by the knight in heavy armor and full helmet.
  • In Michael Flynn's The January Dancer, many rear guards sacrifice themselves to ensure that Hugh escapes.
  • John Geary's claim to fame in Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet. Taking on enemy ships, outnumbered ten to one, so the ships he was escorting could escape immortalized him in The Alliance.
  • This is how Rastar Komas Ta'Norton, last Prince of fallen Therdan, meets his end in the final book of the Prince Roger series.

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  1. ↑ In case you're wondering, he kills it with the spike on his helmet
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