The Crucible
cide is one of the most private acts that anyone can commit. Only the person committing suicide can know exactly why they really killed themselves. It is often something that remains inexplicable to the people around them as only one in five leave a suicide note. When they do, it often remains an inexplicable act, as the suicide note rarely contains any useful information, as the writers and the note often seem in some fundamental way to be disconnected to reality. As Marc Etkind writes in the introduction to his book of suicide notes, "If someone could think clearly enough to leave a cogent note, that person would probably be able to recognize that suicide was a bad idea." But the writings of authors when they are more clear, of depressed authors, of authors on the brink of suicide often are cogent, and they give us insights into the human condition, in both the inclusion and exclusion of what they write. Suicidal writers often treat us to skewed perspectives, where everything is out of place in the world, and only in the act of writing, in the reflection of fiction to reality does the funhouse mirror of perception cease to distort the perspective. But this most intimate of revealings, this sharing of perspective is a grim task, as it takes a great deal of pain to have knowledge of such a skewed perspective. To paraphrase Etkind, the suicide notes, suicide diaries, the novels and poems of depressive writers are all pornography, and we are but sadistic voyeurs who transform a writer's pain into a reader's pleasure.
But to leave it at that would be a mistake, because suicide is one of the most public acts that anyone can commit. Suicide was a public act even back in the time of the Greeks: Socrates committed suicide supposedly surrounded by many of his followers. Military leaders of the past have committed suicide in the presence of their loyal officers to prevent their capture. Even the Bible gives several accounts of very public suicides, from Samson to...
View Full Essay