Please tell me if the following sounds believable: The hero is awaiting his execution that is scheduled for midnight. He can see that it is already dark outside, but since it's winter, it gets dark early, so he has no idea how much time is left - it could be a few hours or a few minutes till they come for him. The waiting is terrifying. He feels that everything in his life was left in some other existence, and in his present existence there is nothing but fear. At some point he feels that he would kill himself if he had means to do it because he cannot bear the horror of waiting. Finally he lies down on the bed and presses the pillow over his head in an attempt to numb the fear. Now, the thing is that the hero is a big, strong, adult male. In addition he is a surgeon and an alpinist, and as far as I understand it, both surgeons and alpinists are rarely fainthearted. Does it sound at all in character for this sort of a person to feel/behave like that?
Rarely fainthearted when it comes to dealing with the aspects of their jobs. But when a man faces his own mortality... that's an entirely different thing.
Sounds plausible to me. Like Kallisto says, having strong nerves doesn't mean being able to face certain death well. In fact, the fact of there being nothing you can do but wait might in fact weigh more heavily on a strong man of action than on a more mild-mannered one. He's used to being able to tackle every challenge through hard work, concentration and physical exertion... but now, all his strength and intellect are absolutely useless. I can certainly see how that might feel unbearable for him.
My thoughts: In my country, it is customary to say that execution is not as terrible as waiting for it. Expect in solitary confinement alone, without the ability to do something, along with the thoughts that they are eating you from the inside. The second seems like an eternity. After a couple of hours of such an expectation, some condemned to death begin to ask to conduct it faster, so as not to tolerate this. A chain reaction begins that leads to depression and suicides in people around the world. I am not a biologist, so I cannot accurately describe the cycle of the mechanism. But in general, the principle is that negative thoughts lead to the production of adrenaline and other hormones in the human body, which in turn causes the body to feel as if something is wrong and causes more fear and negative thoughts. A person cannot sleep, cannot relax, he is in tension 24 hours a day. One can say that he tortures himself. The effect is especially strong if a person is sentenced to death, but does not know the date of execution. To imbue you with a simple example, that you would understand the situation better: The judge gives the convict a choice: the death penalty or life imprisonment with daily torture. The sentenced agrees to imprisonment with torture. Time passes and in a week, maybe a month or a year, but he writes a letter to the judge and asks to change the sentence. The prisoner begins to ask for execution. Your criminal will have the same state of mind.
Everyone would react differently. Jane Boleyn went mad before her execution. Katherine Howard, only 19, had a wobbly when it was passed but met her death in a very collected manner. It depends on how much time it has to sink in and then you become accepting because you have no other choice. It sounds feasible to me but if you know your character very well you'd know how he would react to this.
Yes. Interesting character and situation. It reminded me of Albert Camus' The Outsider where the protagonist is on the death row at the end of the novel. Meursault is brave in the face of certain death at the noose. Camus was politically opposed to capital punishment. He captures the madness before the execution poignantly in the novel.
I can only agree with previous replies. And no matter how brave a person might be, there is always some situation where even they are only human.
