Stories of Death for Children to Teach Morality

Introduction

Modern culture often assumes that shielding children from stories involving death, tragedy, and violence is the best way to cultivate peaceful adults. Yet throughout history, many societies did precisely the opposite. Children were raised on narratives in which danger, mortality, betrayal, sacrifice, and violence were common realities of life. These stories were not intended to glorify brutality. Rather, they frequently served as moral and psychological simulations, helping the young confront the consequences of violence indirectly, through imagination and narrative. A strong argument can therefore be made that exposing children to serious stories, rather than sanitizing all conflict from childhood, can help cultivate adults who understand the gravity of violence and therefore come to abhor it. On the other hand, shooter-type video games have a different effect, making violence seem natural and acceptable.

The Stories

One of my favorite examples is One Thousand and One Nights, often called The Arabian Nights. These stories contain executions, revenge, warfare, betrayal, and sudden death. Yet the violence is rarely meaningless. Characters suffer consequences for greed, tyranny, arrogance, or deception. The framing story itself begins with a king whose violent paranoia leads him to murder successive brides until Scheherazade[1] interrupts the cycle through storytelling and wisdom. Violence is presented not as glamorous but as destructive and destabilizing. Children exposed to such narratives may internalize not merely the existence of death, but the terrible social and moral costs that accompany cruelty and impulsive power.

Traditional fairy tales in Europe performed a similar role. The versions collected by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm were often far darker than their modern adaptations. In early forms of stories like Hansel and Gretel, Snow White[2], and Little Red Riding Hood, children encountered abandonment, predation, cannibalism, and death. These tales emerged from societies where famine, disease, and violence were part of ordinary existence. The stories prepared children psychologically for danger while reinforcing caution, courage, loyalty, and prudence. Scholars such as Bruno Bettelheim argued that fairy tales help children process fear symbolically, allowing them to confront emotional realities in a manageable form rather than through direct experience alone (Bettelheim, 1976). Nowadays, it seems every problem is existential, and that must be considered a critical overreaction.

Ancient myths likewise exposed young audiences to the tragic consequences of violence. In Greek mythology, stories such as the Iliad depict warfare not as a triumphant spectacle but as a chain of grief, rage, pride, and loss. Heroes achieve glory, but at terrible personal and communal cost. Achilles’ wrath leads not merely to victory but to sorrow, death, and emotional devastation. Such stories formed part of the educational environment of the ancient Mediterranean world, shaping moral reflection on honor, fate, and the limits of human aggression.

Religious literature has often functioned similarly. Biblical narratives contain murders, wars, betrayals, and martyrdoms. Yet these accounts generally frame violence as morally consequential rather than recreational. The story of Cain and Abel, for instance, presents murder as a rupture of both family and divine order. Likewise, many Buddhist and Hindu stories portray violence as part of the cycle of suffering and karma, reinforcing the ethical importance of compassion and restraint. By confronting readers with the reality of death and moral consequence, such traditions encourage reflection on the value of life itself.

This does not mean that all exposure to violent stories produces peaceful adults. Context matters greatly. Violence portrayed as glamorous, consequence-free, or purely entertaining may desensitize rather than educate. The crucial distinction lies in whether narratives present violence as tragic and morally weighty or as exciting spectacle. Traditional stories often embedded violence within ethical structures: actions had consequences, suffering carried meaning, and characters faced moral accountability.

Psychologically, narrative exposure may help children develop what might be called “moral imagination.” Through stories, children rehearse fear, loss, courage, and empathy without enduring those experiences directly. Literature becomes a simulation of reality. A child who encounters death in stories may gradually develop emotional frameworks for understanding mortality, grief, and the irreversibility of harm. Shielding children entirely from such themes may leave them emotionally unprepared for the realities of adult life.

There is an important paradox here. Societies that openly acknowledge violence in their stories are not necessarily societies that celebrate violence in practice. In fact, confronting brutality honestly may strengthen revulsion toward it. A child who repeatedly encounters the sorrow caused by revenge, war, or cruelty in literature may come to associate violence not with glory, but with suffering and irreversible loss. The imagination becomes a training ground for ethical restraint.

Death is a frequent and unsentimental tool in Aesop’s Fables. Unlike many modern children’s stories that often soften consequences, Aesop’s fables were originally intended for adults as reflections of the harsh realities of the ancient world. Death serves as the ultimate "finality," illustrating moral failings or the cold indifference of nature. In these fables, death can be a consequence of

a.      Vanity or Greed, to illustrate the price paid for failing to recognize one’s own limitations or for pursuing more than one needs (The Frog and the Ox, The Dog and His Reflection, and The Wolf and the Lamb).

b.     Naive Trust, to warn that certain natures are immutable and that "appeasing" a predator is a fatal mistake (The Wolf and the Lamb and The Farmer and the Viper).

c.      Great Equalizer, to show that status and pride are meaningless in the end (The Two Pots).

d.     Mercy or Inevitability, to show that while we may complain about life, we often fear the alternative (The Old Man and Death).

Modern storytelling continues this tradition in many forms. Works such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and even animated films often include sacrifice, death, and moral struggle. These themes resonate because they address realities that human beings inevitably face. The goal is not just to horrify and to terrify children with death, but to help them understand that courage, compassion, and wisdom arise precisely because life contains danger and loss. Simply put, “Horrify children with death before they seek glory through it.”

Video Games

 In contrast to traditional narratives that portray violence as tragic or morally consequential, some modern video games present death as entertainment, reward, or spectacle. In many action-oriented games, success is measured by “kills,” eliminations, or destruction counts, often accompanied by points, achievements, sound effects, and celebratory animations. Games such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto V place players in environments where repeated virtual killing becomes central to progression and enjoyment. Death is frequently detached from emotional or moral consequence; defeated opponents disappear, instantly respawn, or are reduced to statistics. This can create a psychological environment in which violence becomes abstracted, gamified, and emotionally weightless.

Critics argue that such portrayals risk trivializing human suffering by associating violent acts with excitement, mastery, and social reward. Unlike classical myths or fairy tales, where violence often produces grief, guilt, or moral reckoning, many competitive games emphasize speed, efficiency, and spectacle. The player is rewarded not only for contemplating the consequences of violence, but for performing it skillfully. Scholars such as David Grossman have argued that repetitive exposure to simulated killing in entertainment media may contribute to desensitization, especially when violence is stripped of empathy or realistic aftermath (Grossman & Christensen, 2008). While research remains debated and no simple causal link exists between games and real-world violence, the cultural contrast remains significant: traditional stories often sought to humanize the cost of death, whereas some modern games risk transforming death into amusement, achievement, or routine mechanics divorced from moral reflection.

Dating myself, I was hooked on the video game Doom 2 for a month or so, until it became boring. But just blasting away made it entertaining for a while. Now, I simply cannot see spending hours every day at this kind of activity. Kids and young adults do.

Conclusion

Stories involving death and violence have historically served not merely as entertainment but as moral education and psychological preparation. From One Thousand and One Nights to Grimm’s fairy tales and Greek epics, societies have long used narrative to acquaint children with the consequences of human aggression. When framed ethically and thoughtfully, such stories may help cultivate empathy, caution, and an enduring respect for life. Rather than producing violent adults, serious narratives can deepen a child’s understanding of suffering and thereby strengthen the desire to avoid causing it. Many video games have the opposite effect, normalizing and numbing violence, making it seem like a natural solution to problems.

Today, we face the menace of death and violence; the ancients also faced it with even more kinetics. They tried their best to teach their children about violence as best they could, to fear and condemn it. Were they right, or is sanitizing children’s stories away from hard topics the answer?

References

Bettelheim, B. (1976). The uses of enchantment: The meaning and importance of fairy tales. Alfred A. Knopf.

Grimm, J., & Grimm, W. (2014). The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (J. Zipes, Trans.). Bantam Books. (Original work published 1812)

Homer. (1998). The Iliad (R. Fagles, Trans.). Penguin Classics.

Lewis, C. S. (2001). The chronicles of Narnia. HarperCollins.

Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury.

Zipes, J. (2002). Breaking the magic spell: Radical theories of folk and fairy tales. University Press of Kentucky.

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights (M. Lyons, Trans.). (2008). Penguin Classics.

Grossman, D., & Christensen, L. W. (2008). On combat: The psychology and physiology of deadly conflict in war and in peace (3rd ed.). PPCT Research Publications.

Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Buckley, K. E. (2007). Violent video game effects on children and adolescents: Theory, research, and public policy. Oxford University Press.

Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Violent video games and the Supreme Court: Lessons for the scientific community in the wake of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. American Psychologist, 68(2), 57–74.

 

 

 

©2026 G Donald Allen

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[1] A famous tone poem, Scheherazade, written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888, was written to make these stories into a musical fantasy. It has been popular ever since.

[2] In the 1937 Disney version of Snow White, the witch perishes by falling off a cliff.  In the 2025 Disney movie Snow White, the wicked witch becomes trapped in a mysterious dark energy field that can be reconstructed. Thus, she is still living, and a possible sequel is possible. No death. (Notice also that it connects with the popular concept of dark energy, which physicists require to explain why the universe's expansion is increasing at an increasing rate.)