Failure Is the Only Option/Literature

Examples of Failure Is the Only Option in Literature include:

• In Harry Potter, Big Bad Voldemort is a practically invincible Magnificent Bastard against everyone else, but against Harry Potter? Anything from Deus Ex Machina to playing the Villain Ball will happen to ensure he somehow fails. When he killed Lily Potter, he effectively signed a contract with this trope. It may be true that Anyone Can Die, but Harry inevitably has to survive to the next book. Prior to the end of the series, J. K. Rowling liked to tease fans about the possibility of this being subverted in the last book, suggesting that the series might end with Harry's death. For years, fans debated whether Harry would survive or if he would be forced to destroy Voldemort in some kind of Heroic Sacrifice. Both turned out to be true.
  • Also, Hermione's attempts to shut down Fred and George during Order of the Phoenix. The closest she ever got was stopping them from testing the things on other students by threatening to write to their mother. While she got them to go along with that in an act of instant compliance (a reaction from the twins that had never been seen before or since), all it caused them to do was test their sickness sweets on themselves.
• In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Ibram Gaunt was promised that the first planet he conquered in the Crusade would be his. He told this to the Tanith First & Only, and that they could muster out on it. In the first novels, various factors ensure that no one will let him conquer a planet, or admit it if he did. It gets mentioned much less in later books.
• JRR Tolkien just loved this one for his Middle Earth mythologies, probably influenced by, you know, actual mythological tales which are just full of death and stuff. Two names in particular from The Silmarillion: Feanor. Turin.

Feanor, the mightiest elf that ever lived, made the Simarils, jewels so beautiful that Morgoth (Sauron's boss) himself stole the jewels. He led an entire army of high elves across the sea, slaughtering the elven shipwrights to get the needed ships. When he does get to Middle Earth, he is killed by the Balrog Captain in the first battle. His oath to get the Simarils back kills five of his seven sons, and the oath forces his sons to attack friendly elven nations when Luthien manages to retrieve one of the Simarils from Morgoth. After the final battle, the two remaining sons of Feanor steal the two remaining Simarils; only for their holy light to burn their hands which had been stained with elven blood, to the point that one kills himself and the other throws away the simaril to wander Middle-Earth in penance. In short, Feanor is directly responsible for all occasions of elf-on-elf bloodshed, and the destruction of his sons.

• Catch-22 - Goal: Leave the army alive. Yossarian does eventually succeed at the book's conclusion, but by deserting rather than being discharged.
• Invoked as the basis for a brutally satirical short story in Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs of a Space Traveller: The Further Reminiscies of Ijon Tichy. Attempts to correct history and create a better world fail spectacularly due to a combination of mishap, incompetence, and malice; resulting in a thoroughly fouled-up world -- ie. the one we currently live in.
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government says this to the rebels. Whether or not this is true is up to debate.
• In The Red Tape War, this comes in two flavors:
  • At the beginning, Millard Fillmore Pierce is dispatched to investigate an attack from one warring planet on a battleship temporarily dry-docked on a neutral world in the war zone. Before he can even start heading towards the planet in question, he stumbles on not one, but two interdimensional invasions. Guess what he hasn't even started on when the book ends?
  • Each chapter presents at least one problem for the protagonists to solve. The most dire of these must be solved by the next chapter, but attempts to solve any of the others are doomed to fail until the book is near its conclusion, leading to a steadily amassing pile of increasingly bizarre problems.
• C.M.O.T. Dibbler is like a rat, firmly convinced that just around the corner, there will be cheese, even though every corner turned has so far been cheeseless. Some of his schemes worked, but were unfortunately tied to the near-destruction of the world. So he always reverts to his sausage cart.
• Thanks to a curse, this is literally true for Kallor of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. No matter how high he climbs, he inevitably goes down in flames, and takes everyone else with him.
• It isn't just that Failure Is the Only Option when it comes to trying to assassinate the Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind book series; it's also that only Jesus Christ is able to defeat him, as the Word of God dictates.
• Invoked, enforced and conversed throughout the Sven Hassel novels to the point it became a running joke - regardless how brutal the victory was gained, how boring the inactivity is or how hard the Schnapps hit the poor Wehrmacht trooper in the head, someone, usually Obergefreiter Joseph Porta, would remind the others they fight for defeat, they expect to loose, they would never imagine the Reich could win, the war is lost, usually ending with a drunk "Hail Defeat!" (pun based on the Third Reich slogan "Hail Victory!" - Sieg Heil!). As most of the men in the 27th Panzer Regiment were convicts who had all reasons to hate the Third Reich and anything pertaining to it, loosing the war meant their liberation as well.
• Time Scout: Things are looking very good for Skeeter at the end of Wagers Of Sin. At the start of Ripping Time, he's working several menial jobs. Given his past, there really wasn't any way he could just become a hero.
• In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, the epilogue reveals that Roland is stuck in an endless loop of finding the Dark Tower and being sent back to the middle of his journey.
  • Although this time he has an important Plot Coupon that he'd never been able to hold onto before, hinting that maybe he'll be able to finally win for good.
• This is how most of the characters in My Name Is Red see the world. Things can only decay and get worse. The viewpoint is culturally informed.