personal life and death dilemma theme

A character must make a difficult choice regarding whether someone else lives or dies.

Notes

When a character is contemplating sacrificing their own life for one reason or another, the theme category "human self-sacrifice" is used.

Examples

"cannibalism to survive" refers to any of a number of gruesome scenarios in which a character deprived of other food must decide whether they will accept killing and eating another human in order to survive.

3 total · 1 major · 2 minor

StoryLevelMotivation
movie: PeutEtre (1999) major Should Arthur impregnate his girlfriend or not? If he did, then his future son Ako and Ako's descendants would go on living happily in the future; otherwise they would cease to exist.
movie: Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) minor A trooper strangled a mortally wounded fellow trooper to put him out of his misery.
rh2012e2x10 minor Kevin was faced with this unenviable dilemma: Either run away and leave his girlfriend to hang, or get and get shot in the head with a nail gun. Fortunately for Kevin and his love interest, Roger came to the rescue before Kevin had to make the call.