Statute of Limitations (there needs to be one for fiction)

Currently, I’m reading Jules Verne’s book The Mysterious Island, (which is awesome, but that’s another post for another day), and in reading this book, I am reminded of a conversation I had with my sister one evening in a Red Lobster.

At the time, my sister was in middle school (I think, maybe she was a freshman), regardless, she was reading The Mysterious Island and mentioned it during our meal. As someone who is a big Jules Verne fan, I thought it was neat that she was reading a book that I would read and engaged in her in a discussion about it.

Bad idea.

The way I engaged her in said conversation was to say, “Oh, The Mysterious Island, the one with Captain Nemo, right? And he’s the one doing all that stuff.” You see, I knew that The Mysterious Island comes after 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and that Captain Nemo survived the first book to reappear in the second. What I did not know was that there were people unaware of that fact. After all, the book was published in 1875.

Not nineteen seventy-five, but eighteen seventy-five, as in a decade after the Civil War. My sister had no idea, of course, and I’d just completely ruined the ending for her. I felt bad about that, sure, but at what point do we say, “Sorry, but if you're not aware of that bit of culture already, I can’t do anything for you?” I mean, when people are reading Romeo and Juliet for the first time in school, you wouldn’t feel like you were revealing anything by saying, “Hey, by the way, Romeo and Juliet die at the end,” would you?

I say no.

The question, then, is what is the statute of limitations on this sort of thing? 

It seems to me that there are several factors involved, like how mainstream the work of fiction is, not just its age. For example, in the case of my sister and Mr. Verne, I probably shouldn’t have said anything. The Mysterious Island, while one of Verne’s better known works, isn’t as well known as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Around the World in 80 Days or Journey to the Center of the Earth. Most people are familiar with the work of Shakespeare, though, even if they haven’t read or seen the plays before; he’s such a big part of our culture that the average Joe or Jane will hear the references even if they don’t know where they come from.

Then there’s the case of books that get turned into movies. Obviously, while certain things have to change in order to make the transition of media possible, most major aspects of the plot will stay the same. So what do you do when you have someone who is planning on seeing the movie of a book without reading the book first?

An example: I was talking to some people at work a few years back and we were discussing Harry Potter. Specifically, the fact that *spoiler alert* Snape kills Dumbledore. Now, this was about the time the sixth movie was coming out, but the book had come out long before. People had been talking about it forever, there was a hilarious and horrible video online about someone ruining that fact for people waiting in line for the book to come out, etc. But my manager was upset with the fact that we’d “ruined the movie for him.”

While I feel a little bad about the incident with my sister, I don’t feel the same about that one. Harry Potter was and still is a big deal. If you don’t know one of the key facts in that world, years after it’s revealed, I can’t do anything for you.

That’s why there needs to be a statute of limitations on this sort of thing.

*Spoiler Alert* In Titanic, the boat sinks.