The influences behind Death Note

2003

Death Note

Tsugumi Ohba

Heisei. Japan. Written in Japanese.

Death Note (2003-2006), written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata for Weekly Shonen Jump, follows a student, Light Yagami, who finds a shinigami's notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it, and the detective L who hunts him. It joins a cat-and-mouse detective duel to a Faustian bargain with a death god and a Raskolnikov-style theory of justified murder.

Where it came from

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1866

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russian Realism. Russia. Written in Russian.

Novel about Raskolnikov, a former student who kills a pawnbroker to test his theory that extraordinary men may step over moral law, and the investigator Porfiry Petrovich who closes in on him.

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Light Yagami, a brilliant student who kills to remake society and believes his ends exempt him from moral law, repeats Raskolnikov's theory of the extraordinary man. The duel between Light and L, an investigator who suspects him early and tests him in conversation, parallels Raskolnikov's interviews with Porfiry. Critics make the comparison often, but Ohba has not documented reading the novel.

Where it came from

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1835

Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot)

Honoré de Balzac

French Realism. France. Written in French.

Novel of a Paris boarding house in which a father ruins himself for his daughters and the young Rastignac learns from the criminal Vautrin that society rewards ruthlessness.

What it handed down

To Crime and Punishment (1866)

Direct source, probable.

Rastignac's discussion with a friend about whether one would kill an old mandarin in China by a wish to gain a fortune reappears as the tavern conversation Raskolnikov overhears about killing the pawnbroker for the general good. Vautrin's lecture that great fortunes rest on crime anticipates Raskolnikov's theory. Dostoevsky had translated Balzac's Eugénie Grandet in 1844 and admired him.

Where it came from

King Lear, William Shakespeare c. 1606

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c. 1606

King Lear

William Shakespeare

Jacobean. England. Written in English.

Tragedy of an old king who divides his realm between flattering daughters, rejects the honest one, and is destroyed by their ingratitude.

What it handed down

To Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot) (1835)

Structural model, well documented.

Balzac built Goriot, a father who gives everything to two daughters who then abandon him, on the Lear pattern, and he dies calling for them. Contemporary readers and Balzac's own text recognize Goriot as a bourgeois Lear.

Where it came from

History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), Geoffrey of Monmouth c. 1136

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c. 1136

History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Anglo-Norman. England. Written in Latin.

Legendary chronicle of British kings from Brutus to Cadwallader, including the first written story of King Leir and his three daughters.

What it handed down

To King Lear (c. 1606)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey's chronicle contains the first written story of Leir dividing his kingdom among three daughters and the love test. It reached Shakespeare through Holinshed's Chronicles and the older play King Leir, which retell Geoffrey's version.

Where it came from

The line stops here: compiled from Welsh and Latin chronicle traditions and invention; minor branch.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Crime and Punishment (1866)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot) (1835)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To King Lear (c. 1606)

Where it came from

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