Why Might A Writer Choose to Make Their Characters suffer?

As a child do you remember having to often worry about things? For most of you I would expect for this answer to be a no but now that we’re adults I find that this is the only ever thing that we often do. As children we’d only ever find and read books that had a happily ever after ending to it but now that were adults this is the one thing in books that we cannot often find.

Cheever’s writing is a perfectly good example of this. The Swimmer ends in death and the realization of a wasted life and the Reunion reflects a father who can only repeatedly sabotage his meetings with his estranged son ‘leaving both of them lacking the thing they most want, some connection and authentic change’. It’s safe to say that children wouldn't usually tend to come across anything like this; they’d come across a bad guy instead but then this bad guy would get killed and the world would carry on as normal.

The only argument that I can support in favor for this as to why an author might find the need to make their characters suffer is because we are all individuals that are expected to live in the ‘real world’. As humans we progress from childhood, to stages of adolescence and then to adult hood and it is here that we begin to realize that nothing is ever as it seems. Harsh realities and brutal truths set in but from my experience what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.