# I need to kill off a character



## oakly (Aug 12, 2014)

So I have this character whose mom died when she (my character) was three years old. Her father is Chippewa/Ojibwe Indian. I'm trying to figure out how her mother died so that her father would eventually turn his back on his culture. it was suggested to me that maybe his family was not happy with him marrying a white woman and killed her but I'm not sure I like that a whole lot. any ideas on how her death could have triggered an anger towards my character's father's culture and family? The plot of the story is that this girl (no name yet) is trying to find out who she is and where she comes from but her father will not help her. Because her father has shut-out his family there is nobody else left to share her culture with her and she is forced to find out who she is on her own.

Any suggestions would be fantastic, thanks!


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## Nickleby (Aug 13, 2014)

Since I don't know anything about Chippewa culture, I'll go with the more general type motives.

The mother develops some kind of disease, say, cancer. The local doctor misdiagnoses it. Before she can go to a specialist for proper treatment, the disease progresses to a point where nothing can save her. The father blames the doctor and by extension the town, even though they did nothing wrong. Also, he doesn't want something similar to befall his daughter.

The father (or an ancestor) has done something criminal or taboo. To avoid the contempt of the townsfolk, he leaves. While in the outside world he falls in love and gets married. She talks him into moving back home and reconciling with the family or the town. Things go well for a few years, but the old animosity flares up. A local hothead attacks the wife (or burns down their house or something else, depends on the atmosphere you want).

The father, very intelligent, goes away to school on an engineering scholarship. He marries a woman he meets while away from home. A mining company recruits him to falsify a report that would give them unlimited rights to dig in the area, which would ruin it as a habitat. The mother joins a protest against the strip mining and is killed in an accident (or even a murder). As a result the mine is stopped by the courts, but the father believes he's responsible for her death.


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## aj47 (Aug 14, 2014)

Another option:

The mother dies in a car accident with a drunk driver on the reservation and the father hates drunks and the reservation culture of alcoholism.


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