You Shall Not Pass/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

** In the book, however, [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|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.

*** "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.

**** With his brother Huor, father of Tuor, although Huor gets to actually die, where Hurin gets taken prisoner before Morgoth and is [[Fate Worse Than Death|made to watch everything bad that happens to his family by magic]] as revenge.

*** Finrod Felagund breaks out of his chains and kills a Werewolf barehanded to save Beren.

*** 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''<ref> In case you're wondering, he kills it with [[Use Your Head|the spike on his helmet]]</ref>. 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 [[Stupid Sacrifice|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.

** 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 ''[[X Wing Series|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.

** A massive invading army of eight-foot-tall berserker ''wolf-men'', which simply adds a whole 'nother level of [[Badass|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.

** 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 ''His Last Command'', Gaunt and Wilder [[More Hero Than Thou|dispute over who has the honor of taking a company and holding off the Blood Pact to let the rest of the regiment escape]]. Since Gaunt does not have a command rank, Wilder wins.

* ''[[The Guns of Navarone]]'' by Alistair MacLean (variant with wounded guy).

* Rockjaw Grang in the ''[[Redwall]]'' novel "The Long Patrol", after [[Taking the Bullet|being fatally wounded]]. He manages to kill over twenty [[Mooks]] before he finally dies.

* 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, [[More Hero Than Thou|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.

* 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 [[BFS|usual weapon]] was stolen, Dian Wei instead used a normal infantryman's sword until it broke, at which point he used a pair of [[Grievous Harm with a Body|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.)

* In Henry Zhou's [[Warhammer 40,000]] novel ''The Emperor's Mercy'', Imperial Guardsmen are surrounded by Chaos forces and [[Last Stand|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 [[Famed in Story|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.

* 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 [[Memetic Mutation|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.

* A fairly common way for [[Bolo|Bolos]] to go. ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|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.

* 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 Juggernaut|The Reaper]], a Demonic [[Serial Killer]] in order to give Wil and Amberle time to destroy the bridge. Easily his [[Dying Moment of Awesome]].

* ''[[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 ''[[Spiral Arm|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]].

 

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