What are the canonical literary discussions of suicide?
January 20, 2024 8:29 AM   Subscribe

What are the canonical literary discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation?

I need to compile a list for a piece of "stop trying to ban books from school libraries" advocacy down here in the Free State of Florida. Obviously Romeo and Juliet, but I could really use a few more blockbusters, and to my eternal shame as an English major, I'm drawing a blank.
posted by saladin to Media & Arts (29 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Pretty good list here, though I don't know how many of these are taught these days (probably more than my first thought, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther!).
posted by carrienation at 8:51 AM on January 20, 2024 [4 favorites]


Wikipedia has a list of suicides in fiction.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:01 AM on January 20, 2024


How not to commit suicide Art Kleiner

Ordinary People, book by Judith Guest, then movie
posted by theora55 at 9:21 AM on January 20, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Surely, the famous To be or not to be monologue from Hamlet, Act III, Scene I.
posted by JonJacky at 9:54 AM on January 20, 2024 [8 favorites]


Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
posted by FencingGal at 10:34 AM on January 20, 2024 [3 favorites]


Best answer: Just in books that are literally taught in middle or high school that I assume conservatives like and wouldn’t want to ban for other reasons too (so no Bell Jar or Catcher in the Rye or Things Fall Apart):

Shakespeare has quite a few, including Othello, Ophelia (maybe?), Lady Macbeth, even Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer’s Night Dream. That last one of course isn’t really a *discussion*, but it would probably be out of bounds for any school ban on suicide mentions, and Midsummer is relevant because it’s often the earliest introduction to Shakespeare, ie, in middle schools.

Also Anna Karenina, Les Miserables (Javert), Jane Eyre (Bertha), Catch-22. Cannery Row isn’t often taught compared to other Steinbeck, but most of your pro-censorship types would probably consider Steinbeck canonical generally. I would also say Dorian Gray but maybe the terrible people in Florida want to ban Oscar Wilde, notably gay person?
posted by alligatorpear at 10:39 AM on January 20, 2024


And in terms of suicide contemplation/discussion, Goethe’s Faust contemplates suicide, as does Eve in Paradise Lost. Those may be more often college texts but for what it’s worth I was assigned them senior year of high school.
posted by alligatorpear at 10:47 AM on January 20, 2024


Kate Chopin's The Awakening is about a lot of things, not just suicide, but the entire emotional thrust of the story is towards the suicide at the end.
posted by jackbishop at 11:03 AM on January 20, 2024 [5 favorites]


Best answer: Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear have attempted or completed suicides.

Death of a Salesman.
posted by praemunire at 11:04 AM on January 20, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Jumping back roughly two millennia, Jocasta commits suicide in Oedipus Rex.
posted by praemunire at 11:10 AM on January 20, 2024 [1 favorite]


Anna Karenina.
posted by Melismata at 12:24 PM on January 20, 2024


Les Misérables.
posted by Melismata at 12:26 PM on January 20, 2024


Miss Julie, the play by August Strindberg.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:29 PM on January 20, 2024


In Steppenwolf the protagonist does a lot of suicide ideation but the act never occurrs.
posted by rodlymight at 12:42 PM on January 20, 2024


Arguably To Kill a Mockingbird? Though they probably want to ban that, so maybe not.
posted by Alensin at 1:24 PM on January 20, 2024


Best answer: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:13 PM on January 20, 2024


Best answer: Two plays: The Seagull by Checkhov and Hedda Gabler by Ibsen.
posted by FencingGal at 2:31 PM on January 20, 2024


The bible has multiple stories of suicide, including King Saul.
posted by SyraCarol at 3:35 PM on January 20, 2024


Not sure if they qualify as "literary" but in philosophy Schopenhauer wrote "On Suicide" and Camus wrote, "The Myth of Sisyphus" which has a section on Absurdity and Suicide.
posted by statusquoante at 5:18 PM on January 20, 2024 [2 favorites]


but most of your pro-censorship types would probably consider Steinbeck canonical generally.

Steinbeck is reviled by the right for socialist leanings. Or at least writing books that make people synpathetic to socialist leanings and less sympathetic to capitalism. Also for Of Mice and Men which arguably justifies something portrayed as a sort of mercy killing.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:30 PM on January 20, 2024


A well known and respected YA book that deals with depression/suicidal ideation is It's Kind of a Funny Story (the author himself later died by suicide, sadly.)
posted by gudrun at 5:48 PM on January 20, 2024


Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish
posted by Thorzdad at 6:09 PM on January 20, 2024


Darkness Visible by William Styron is about depression, and it includes a fair amount of discussion of suicide.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:55 PM on January 20, 2024


Sorrows of Young Werther — even led to a rash of copycat suicides across Europe
posted by matkline at 9:38 PM on January 20, 2024


Resumé by Dorothy Parker
posted by Chenko at 8:58 AM on January 21, 2024 [1 favorite]


Ruth Ozeki's recentish A Tale for the Time Being deals with this in a really beautiful way.

"In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace — and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine."
posted by guessthis at 4:23 AM on January 22, 2024


It doesn't get much more canonical than John Donne's (1648), Biathanatos. A Declaration of that Paradoxe, Or Thesis, that Self-homicide is Not So Naturally Sin, that it May Never be Otherwise: Wherein the Nature, and the Extent of All Those Lawes, which Seeme to be Violated by this Act, are Diligently Surveyed. (pdf). Also: Borges' essay on the Biathanatos (in Other Inquisitions).

For a secondary source: A. Alvarez, The Savage god; a study of suicide is an oft-cited monograph discussing literary depictions of suicide. (But if you happen to read Dutch, I'd rather recommend Jeroen Brouwers' De laatste deur, a monumental literary work in its own right.)

And just in case: there is help.
posted by bleston hamilton station at 8:23 AM on January 22, 2024 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: These are all excellent answers, thanks so much folks. I've marked as "best" the ones that I'm going to lean on for my presentation today; wish me luck!!
posted by saladin at 8:32 AM on January 22, 2024 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Unanimous vote to retain the book in question. We did it!!! Thanks y'all.
posted by saladin at 5:37 PM on January 23, 2024 [6 favorites]


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