While Snowman, as many people have pointed out, has a very grim life ahead of him, I found James Cole's life in 12 Monkeys considerably more disturbing. He experiences just about everything that could go wrong in a dystopian future: his life is manipulated by far more powerful people, he loses his grip on what is real and believes himself to be insane, and ultimately becomes a witness to his own death. As with many time-travelers, he is ultimately helpless in the past even though he has such extensive knowledge of it; Cole's story employs the Cassandra myth to find tragedy.