The Theme of Suicide in Literature

[Epistemophile]

I start with these basic questions:
How many characters/authors can you immediately think of who have committed suicide?
In case of a fictional character committing suicide, how does it affect the other characters?
How is suicide represented in the instances that you can think of?
Does reading about suicide enhance one's latent suicidal tendencies?

[KilgoreT]

Ernest Hemingway committed suicide.

***Possible Spoiler Warning***

In For Whom the Bell Tolls suicide is an important theme. The main character contemplates it and wonders what he will do in certain situations. The character's father committed suicide. I found this to be very interesting because Ernest Hemingway's father also committed suicide. It seems to me that at least part of the character's thought process directly reflected the author's own thoughts and ideas that ran through his head. The book was published, I believe, about twenty years before Hemingway killed himself. I think it was an idea Hemingway struggled with for a large part of his life.

Just saw on Wikipedia that his brother and sister also committed suicide. The article claims there may be evidence for a genetic link. I never knew about that.

[dfloyd]

all of his life. Hemingway had a lust for life and lived it to its fullest. In his later years, he became paranoid in thinking the government, specifically the IRS, was 'after him'. He could've been bipolar or schizophrenic. Doctors in that era were doing 'things' with the brain that today would be termed malpractice, and in some cases near crminal, such as performing the frontal lobotomy. In Hemingways case, he was given electric shock treatments to the brain. To my knowledge, he never consented to these, but they were probably ok'd by his wife. The shock treatments were extensive, and produced such feelings of helplessness that he preferred to die. They left him in a mental fog unable to think clearly or read, let alone write. He was institutionalized for these radical treatments. Today, he would be treated with drugs as an outpatient.

Other authors who took their own life were Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, both of whom were probably suffering from Schizophrenia. In a more severe case, the sister of John F. Kennedy was turned into a vegetable through a frontal lobotomy.

In the play and movie, Suddenly, Last Summer, by Tennessee Williams, a distraught patient, played by Elizabeth Taylor, is cured by a doctor using hypnotic therapy (Montgomery Clift) rather than allowing the performance of a frontal lobotomy. I believe a close relative of Williams, possibly his sister Rose, suffered in a like manner as did Taylor in his play.

In "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kersey's character is given a frontal lobotomy, then undergoes a mercy killing by another patient in a government hospital for the disturbed.

As Dorothy Parker said, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy."

A well-known suicide in modern literature is commited by the primary character in John O'Hara's "Appointment in Sammara."

[KilgoreT]

Thanks for that info dfloyd, I did not know that. I will revise my statement to say that just from reading some of his writing it seems like his father's suicide was at least on his mind. And who wouldn't have it on their mind? Is that fair to say? I'm no expert.

I personally was fascinated during the passages about suicide in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Then again, I have the hindsight of knowing that Hemingway did later kill himself.

[PabloQ]

Shakespeare provides multiple treatments of suicide in his plays. Cleopatra kills herself with an asp. Romeo and Juliet through a series of unfortunate events kill them selves. But most significantly Shakespeare explores suicide in "Hamlet". Ophelia throws herself into a river. It seems far from effective, but in her case it works. Hamlet's whole "to be or not to be" soliloquy is about whether or not he should kill himself . If you are looking for a place in literature to start exploring the treatment of suicide, start with Hamlet.

[dfloyd]

Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Brutus, et al .... so he really didn't have a fixation on suicide.

[Emil Miller]

Two that come to mind are Javert's suicide in Les Miserables and Blanche Stroeve's in The Moon and Sixpence. There are probably a number of other's that I'm unable to think of off-hand. There's the curious fact that I have written three novels; in two of which the main character commits suicide and another lesser, though important, character also kills himself in the third and it hadn't occurred to me that suicide was a factor in all three until this thread.

[OrphanPip]

Werther from The Sorrows of Young Werther and Ophelia are probably the most famous examples of suicide in Western lit.

[mal4mac]

Anna Karenina.

The ancients, like Cleopatra, Marc Antony, Brutus, had a tendency to use suicide to end their troubles. It would be difficult to think of their stories he might have told without suicide coming in somewhere (e.g., "The Death of Socrates", "Seneca and Nero"...) So Shakespeare was simply staying true to the historical material.

I don't think Shakespeare had a fixation on suicide - but he certainly knew how to exploit the dramatic potential of various forms of violent death.

[JBI]

The beautiful book Kokoro by Soseki, though, it's Japanese perspective that really deals with differing aesthetics is fascinating.

[Buh4Bee]

The first ones I thought of were already listed: Hemingway, Plathe, and Hunter S. Thompson (not listed) and fictional characters: Anna Kareinina.

Then I think of Madame Bovary by Flaubert. Madame Bovary’s suicide lead to her own husband’s death and her only daughter orphaned and destitute. This is a sad notion when the daughter came from the bourgeois class, being a doctor’s daughter, left to work in a mill. Her suicide spoke to me as a kind of warning as to what can “go down,” if a woman lives like a man. I think the suicuide also spoke to the serious limitation that life can present to a person with insatiable appetite as Madame Bovary had- numerous love affairs and the desire for beautiful material things (living beyond her means).

At times, the books we read or choose to read allow us to explore themes in life that we would never have the nerve to experience ourselves. I can aquire a very strong appetite for life, but I would never be able to live the lifestyle of a hedonist/adultress, morally or emotionally. Suicide is never appealing to me, even when I experience dark moments.

[Paulclem]

Then I think of Madame Bovary by Flaubert. Madame Bovary’s suicide lead to her own husband’s death and her only daughter orphaned and destitute. This is a sad notion when the daughter came from the bourgeois class, being a doctor’s daughter, left to work in a mill. Her suicide spoke to me as a kind of warning as to what can “go down,” if a woman lives like a man. I think the suicuide also spoke to the serious limitation that life can present to a person with insatiable appetite as Madame Bovary had- numerous love affairs and the desire for beautiful material things (living beyond her means).


The ironic thing about Madam Bovary's death, in addition to what you say, is that it causes her husband to pine away for her in the most romantic manner - which was in fact the romance she had been searching for in her love affairs.

The theme of suicide is explored from the catholic angle in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter where Major Scobie kills himself.

[virgo27]

It is quite ironic that this pining leads to his death. I have thought about her cruel treatment of her husband throughout the novel and always felt pity toward him. She was not able to accept his love, I suppose. I assume there is some kind of connection to her emotional instability. Maybe that is another layer of her suicide.

[Paulclem]

It is quite ironic that this pining leads to his death. I have thought about her cruel treatment of her husband throughout the novel and always felt pity toward him. She was not able to accept his love, I suppose. I assume there is some kind of connection to her emotional instability. Maybe that is another layer of her suicide.

If I remember correctly - and it's been a long time since I studied it - she read lots of romantic novels. He was a bit of a disappointment to her. Is Madame Bovary thus anti-romantic?

[Buh4Bee]

I believe you are correct.

[Venerable Bede]

Hmm, I'm actually finding it hard to think of too many works I've read that contain the suicide of major characters. Dr. Jekyll drinking a chemical to destroy Hyde at the end of the story is a suicide I suppose. Another suicide is Dido's death in Virgil's Aeneid. That one is a major part of the epic and is fairly famous.

Other than those and the suicides in most of Shakespeare's tragedies, I can't really think of anymore right now.

[Cunninglinguist]

But most significantly Shakespeare explores suicide in "Hamlet". Ophelia throws herself into a river. It seems far from effective, but in her case it works. Hamlet's whole "to be or not to be" soliloquy is about whether or not he should kill himself . If you are looking for a place in literature to start exploring the treatment of suicide, start with Hamlet.

Hamlet is virtually a male version of Dido - the similarities are remarkable. Of course, the most apparent is the theme of suicide. But it is deeper than that; in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, the line "When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?" was lifted from the Aeneid: "No: die as you deserve, / Give pain quietus with a steel blade." (IV, 758-759 in the Fitzgerald trans, I think). Moreover, Dido pretty much considers the question "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer...or to take arms against a sea of troubles..." as well when she learns that Aeneas is going to leave her (and has effectively already left). If the analogy is forced, Aeneas becomes analogous Hamlet's father, which perhaps accidentally adds a homosexual and incestuous dimension to the interpretation (woohoo?). We can consider the line "Woman's [Dido's] a thing / Forever fitful and forever changing" (IV 791-792) replace "Woman's" with "Hamlets'" and you've pretty much got one of his defining characteristics, and Hamlet's uncle tells Hamlet that his grief is unmanly. Not sure what my point here is...I suppose that it is that one cannot fully explore Hamlet without exploring Dido.

Anyways, the Greek tragedies are full of suicide but are perhaps less remarkable because they do not treat the theme in a terribly refined manner; Hamlet's character is much like Dido (and Shakespeare often draws so much from the classics), though Shakespeare presents him in a much more refined manner. But suicide often inconspicuously permeates into literature. In the Divine Comedy, for example, you can make a case that Dante was suicidal within the first seven lines - that line "it is so bitter death is little more" is suspiciously unprovoked and indicates that he has at least considered death as an alternative (and isn't that the definition of suicidal?); moreover, he is amid a forest which, later on we learn, is what the lot of suicides become in hell. Perhaps he feels that he is wandering lost amongst the suicidals? Such interpretations haven't often been entertained - presumably out of respect - but are nonetheless sound.

Edit:


Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Brutus, et al .... so he really didn't have a fixation on suicide.

From that fact that he chose to write about them and chose to write about them in such-and-such a way, we can infer things about his character, so I think your conclusion is a bit hasty.


I don't think Shakespeare had a fixation on suicide - but he certainly knew how to exploit the dramatic potential of various forms of violent death.

I more or less agree; even if he did consider it, it was a fleeting consideration. He died prematurely, which leads me to believe that he didn't really take care of himself because he was somewhat depressed. Aristotle said that the best poets are either experiencing the emotions they're pouring out onto the page or have a touch of madness in them - I think Shakespeare had both. But these are just speculations, opinions and gut feelings.

[Emmy Castrol]

I second whoever suggested John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra. Best dissection of the lead up to suicide caused by an insular, middle class lifestyle (seems to be the way the whole developed world is trending) I've read.

[TheDreadPilgrim]

Svidrigailov's suicide in "Crime and Punishment" was very significant if you look at him as a kind of Extraordinary man. His sudden end implicates the ultimate worth of one who "steps over".

Also the woman who drinks Draino in "breakfast of Champions" ha.

[Epistemophile]

Hmm, I'm actually finding it hard to think of too many works I've read that contain the suicide of major characters. Dr. Jekyll drinking a chemical to destroy Hyde at the end of the story is a suicide I suppose. Another suicide is Dido's death in Virgil's Aeneid. That one is a major part of the epic and is fairly famous.

Other than those and the suicides in most of Shakespeare's tragedies, I can't really think of anymore right now.

A very interesting interpretation. It is perhaps hard to pin-point the exact nature of this destruction of the self, or rather, a part of it. It oscillates ambiguously between suicide and murder, I should think. To look at it in another way, it could perhaps even be called euthanasia. Reminds me of Cronenberg's 'The Fly' in this context.

[Epistemophile]

Two that come to mind are Javert's suicide in Les Miserables and Blanche Stroeve's in The Moon and Sixpence. There are probably a number of other's that I'm unable to think of off-hand. There's the curious fact that I have written three novels; in two of which the main character commits suicide and another lesser, though important, character also kills himself in the third and it hadn't occurred to me that suicide was a factor in all three until this thread.

Hi,
In Darkness Visible, William Styron says that it was only much later in his career that he realised that his fiction was populated with characters who committed or contemplated suicide. Dramatizing and representing instances and themes of suicide (and being totally unconscious about it) helped him deal with his own latent suicidal impulses, assisted him in finding some sort of antidote.
I was wondering if this would have any relevance in your case.
The two literary incidents of suicide you mentioned - Javert and Blanche - are both egoistic: one is racked by guilt and the other is tormented by isolation and abandonment. How does the characters in your novels die? What might be the possible reasons?

[Jono]

Dostoevsky seems to have been barely able to get through writing a book without at least one character topping themselves! Great literature very often concerns itself with a quest for meaning and enlightenment in life; for those who don't find it, suicide is presented as one logical, though morbid, means of escape.

[kiki1982]

I am not suprîsed to hear that, really. The man was condemned to death, and standing right in front of the firing squad, about to die, was pardoned. Can't remember why, but that must have no doubt made such an impression that it really destroyed his life completely.

Devious, those Russians...

[Emil Miller]

Hi,
In Darkness Visible, William Styron says that it was only much later in his career that he realised that his fiction was populated with characters who committed or contemplated suicide. Dramatizing and representing instances and themes of suicide (and being totally unconscious about it) helped him deal with his own latent suicidal impulses, assisted him in finding some sort of antidote.
I was wondering if this would have any relevance in your case.
The two literary incidents of suicide you mentioned - Javert and Blanche - are both egoistic: one is racked by guilt and the other is tormented by isolation and abandonment. How does the characters in your novels die? What might be the possible reasons?

I have just checked on W.Styron and it seems that he was the victim of a terrible depression that he subsequently managed to shake off. I believe that is the subject of Darkness Visible which seems to be autobiographical.
Although like many people I get depressed at times , I don't think it equates to anything that Styron experienced.

The suicides that occur in my books are quite different from each other in that one may have been due to mental aberration rather than a deliberate attempt on the part of the protagonist to end his life, although the coroner's verdict is one of suicide.

In another it is definitely suicide when a man hangs himself through depression at how his son, a leading cabinet minister, has damaged the UK in pursuit of his ambition.

In the third story it is caused by the realisation of the leading character that, although he hates the meretricious world of mass entertainment, he has inadvertently helped to propagate the very thing he despises.

[Blasarius '33]

Here there be spoilers. Can't imagine why I didn't think of that possibility before looking in here. Whoopsie.

[scotta.clark]

I believe to give lecture on suicide is better to define the religious and mother nature's point of views.