The Death Trap – A Plot Device

What is the death trap plot device? In this post, we define the death trap, include types of death traps, and offer examples of the death trap plot device.

A death trap in real life is an extremely dangerous location, structure, device, or vehicle that is potentially life-threatening. A death trap in literature takes this idea and uses it as a means for a villain or a villainous organisation to kill a protagonist.

What Is The Death Trap Plot Device?

According to Wikipedia: ‘A death trap is a literary and dramatic plot device in which a villain who has captured the hero or another sympathetic character attempts to use an elaborate, improbable, and usually sadistic method of murdering them.’

This plot device (or trope) is common in horror, thrillers, crime, science fiction, dystopian, and adventure stories. It requires that protagonists escape seemingly impossible, precarious scenarios. It creates high-stakes tension, allows the villain to reveal crucial information, and shows the hero’s ingenuity or luck in escaping.

Instead of just killing the opposition, the villain captures them and places them in a death trap. Sometimes, the villain gives a speech taking their time to explain their evil plan. They also tell the hero that they want them to suffer, and then exit the scene, leaving them to die.

This trope usually allows the hero to escape, and highlights the villain’s arrogance, sadism, and theatricality.

Examples Of The Death Trap Plot Device In Fiction

1. In Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games franchise, the Arena is a quintessential death trap plot device. It is a controlled, artificial environment designed by ‘Gamemakers’ that forces participants to interact, and ensure that death occurs. The arena not only acts as a setting, but as an antagonist that forces tributes to fight against both each other and the environment itself.
2. In The Maze Runner by James Dashner, the Maze is a sophisticated death trap plot device. Monsters that patrol the maze and walls that move nightly prevent escape. Death is a constant threat.
3. In All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban, six students are trapped in a room and forced to choose one person to die or everyone perishes. “Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.”
4. In Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, a group of writers are tricked into a writers’ retreat that is actually a trap. They are confined and turn to desperate measures to survive. It is a satirical take on the genre.
5. In Hide by Kiersten White, seven teenagers compete in a deadly game of hide-and-seek in an abandoned amusement park.
6. In Misery by Stephen King, a writer is held captive by Annie Wilkes, his number one fan. It is a psychological and physical trap where the hero must navigate his captor’s whims to survive.
7. In Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall, Sara and her sceptical friends navigate a spooky, shifting, and lethal forest to find a lost friend.
8. In One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus, five students fall into a ‘trap’ of suspicion when one dies during detention.
9. In Ian Fleming‘s Live and Let Die, James Bond and his lover, Solitaire, find themselves being lowered into a pool filled with man-eating sharks.
10. In Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer, Opal Koboi traps Artemis and Holly in an abandoned theme park overrun by trolls and leaves them to die.
11. In Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, a haunted furniture store, Orsk, is the setting for a night of torture. The store layout is a supernatural trap designed to break the employees.
12. In The Phantom of the Opera, the back door to the Phantom’s house leads into his ‘torture chamber’, specifically built there to trap anyone who tries to sneak up on him.
13. In The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe, a man is tortured by means of a series of death traps, including a bottomless pit and crushing walls, from which he barely manages to escape.
14. The Saw franchise is based entirely around a Serial Killer abducting a person or a group of people, and then placing them in a room. To escape death they must either mutilate themselves or kill someone else.
15. In Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective, the villain, Ratigan ties up Basil and Dawson in an intricate mousetrap and tells them about his plot to kill the queen. He then leaves, assuming the two will soon be dead.
16. In And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, the confined island setting and the systematic elimination of guests defines the trapped and dying trope.
17. In the film, Escape Room, the entire escape room is a death course, with the occupants only having one hour to figure out all of the puzzles and escape.
18. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the death trap plot device works as a psychological and physical trap. The uninhabited island is the villain – a controlled environment where the schoolboys are trapped, removing the veneer of civilisation and exposing their worst natures.
19. In In the Walls of Eryx by H.P. Lovecraft & Kenneth Sterling, a space explorer is trapped on Venus in an invisible, lethal maze.
20. In The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (Stephen King), 100 boys must walk at a certain speed. If they fall below it, they are killed.
21. In one of the The Nancy Drew Files books, Nancy is knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, she finds she’s been tied to a piling, left to drown when the incoming tide rises.
22. In A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, Count Olaf forces Violet and Klaus to act in his play under threat of harming a kidnapped Sunny.
23. In 1984 by George Orwell, Winston Smith is lured into a false sense of rebellion by a totalitarian state, but it is really a death trap plot device. It is a psychological and social trap designed to enforce submission.

Some Of The Many Classic Death Trap Tropes (From TV Tropes)

1. Acid Pool
2. Beast in the Maze
3. Booby Trap
4. Buried Alive
5. Chained to a Railway
6. Chained to a Rock
7. Conveyor Belt o’ Doom
8. Deadly Gas
9. Death Course
10. Descending Ceiling
11. Drowning Pit
12. Electrified Bathtub
13. Escape Route Surprise
14. Fake Platform
15. Fed to the Beast
16. Fright Deathtrap
17. Gas Chamber
18. Gladiator Games
19. Indy Escape
20. Lava Pit
21. Locked in a Freezer
22. Murder by Cremation
23. Packed Hero
24. Perilous Play
25. Pendulum of Death
26. Robotic Torture Device
27. Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts
28. Sand Necktie
29. Sauna of Death
30. Saw Blades of Death
31. Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere
32. Shark Pool
33. Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom
34. Snake Pit
35. Spikes of Doom
36. Strapped to a Bomb
37. Strapped to a Rocket
38. Strapped to an Operating Table
39. Stuck on a Ski Lift
40. This Is Not a Floor
41. Thrown Down a Well
42. Trap Door
43. Trapped In a Tanning Bed
44. Trial-and-Error Gameplay
45. To the Pain
46. The Walls Are Closing In

Elements Of The Death Trap

1. Build Tension

This device forces the protagonist into a situation where escape seems impossible, encouraging the reader to read on and see how they will survive. Writers using this trope must describe the mechanism of the death trap device, and give plenty of sensory details such as the sound of water rushing, the smell of gas, the sound of gears grinding, or watching the walls close in. They must use a ticking clock that makes the deadline real. The setting of the trap should reflect the villain’s personality.

2. The Villain’s Speech

The villain sometimes gives a long speech taunting their victim, revealing how they will soon die. They talk about how they have tried for so long to capture the protagonist and how happy they are to finally catch them. Because the villain believes the hero is already doomed, they take time to explain their master plan, providing exposition to the reader.

3. The Great Escape

A crucial part of traditional death traps is that they don’t actually result in the protagonist’s death, although others may die. There has to be a plausible escape for your hero, regardless of how strange it might be. For example, James Bond can turn his watch into a rotary saw. Your protagonist must find a believable way to get themselves out of an unfortunate scenario.

The Last Word

I hope you enjoyed this post on the death trap plot device. Why don’t you use it in your next story?

by Amanda Patterson
© Amanda Patterson

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