Literary (that is, fictional) suicides

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Leaving aside the bloody fields of Shakespeare, what notable characters kill themselves? I'm looking for examples primarily from 20th century novels.

― Leee Majors (Leee), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Quentin Compson, The Sound and the Fury
Septimus Warren Smith, Mrs. Dalloway
John the Savage, Brave New World

― Leee Majors (Leee), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Dorian Gray, The Picture of Dorian Gray (not quite 20th century, but awfully close, and such a unique form)

― mouse, Monday, 1 December 2003 06:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Werther

― Girolamo Savonarola, Monday, 1 December 2003 06:35 (twenty-two years ago)

So Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary are out... There's a really chilling scene in Jude the Obscure where the young son kills the four (?) infant children and himself. That's almost 20th century...

― Prude (Prude), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:36 (twenty-two years ago)

have to write a paper, do you?

hmm.

― Jeremy the Kingfish (Kingfish), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I just realized how bad with spoilers this thread will be.

― Leee Majors (Leee), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Heh, true. "I read all 800 pages of Anna Karenina so you don't have to!"

― Prude (Prude), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Does Doctor Faustus (Mann) count?
I, Claudius (technically...)

― Girolamo Savonarola, Monday, 1 December 2003 06:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I, Caludius has the best drinking game ever. Not that that helps.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 1 December 2003 06:52 (twenty-two years ago)

the freakiest one is that one in dostoevsky! stavrogin, the possessed. when he has that look on his face!

― maryann (maryann), Monday, 1 December 2003 07:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh 20th century! well the guy in platform is supposed to kill himself at the end, but I thought that wasn't super disturbing. the rudest one in literary literature that I can remember, (silliest), is at the end of Jude the Obscure, even tho I really like that book, but that's not 20th century, but it's like the whole family of children kill themselves.

― maryann (maryann), Monday, 1 December 2003 07:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Seymour Glass in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 1 December 2003 07:06 (twenty-two years ago)

There's this book by Keith Waterhouse that's a 'suicide note', it's called 'Our Song'

― maryann (maryann), Monday, 1 December 2003 07:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Ralph Marvell in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country, published 1913. (MAJOR SPOILERS: He pulls the trigger after he finds out his social-climbing no-good nouveau riche ex-wife was already married once before he ever met her, and that she's only suing for custody of their son to squeeze enough money out of him to buy an annulment from Rome so she can marry a marquis. His death makes the annulment unnecessary. There's a great line in there about how she wears black for a few weeks, "not quite mourning, but something decently regretful.")

James O. Incandenza in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Sticks his head in a microwave oven. (I forget how he rigs it so it doesn't shut off, but the effects are apparently spectacular.)

― spittle (spittle), Monday, 1 December 2003 08:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Most people in Thomas Bernhard novels.

― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Monday, 1 December 2003 09:33 (twenty-two years ago)

The one which really affected me was Svidrigailiov's suicide at the end of Crime and Punishment. I know he's a bastard and all, but it's very moving. His last words before he blows his head off with a revolver: 'if they ask questions, reply that i said i was going to America.'

Not 20th century obv., but influenced all 20th century lit., so i think it counts. 1866 pub.

― Pete S, Monday, 1 December 2003 10:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Was it a suicide in that last Donna Tartt book, I only got to page 90 or so

― dave q, Monday, 1 December 2003 10:55 (twenty-two years ago)

(also 'Atomised'! did he or not?)

― dave q, Monday, 1 December 2003 10:55 (twenty-two years ago)

'Crash'? Does fatal recklessness count?

― dave q, Monday, 1 December 2003 10:56 (twenty-two years ago)

A Character in 'Vile Bodies' who I can't for the life of me remember.

― Nu-Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 1 December 2003 10:58 (twenty-two years ago)

There's probably a Mishima novel where this occurs

― dave q, Monday, 1 December 2003 11:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, the spoilers thing sucks. I shall not be reading this thread again.

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 1 December 2003 11:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Detective Upshaw in 'The Big Nowhere'
one of the 'suspects' in 'The Killer Inside Me'
Lots of people in crime novels who kill themselves right before they're about to get caught
The Arab guy in 'The Stranger' who kills himself just by being there
The Colonel Who Only Died By His Own Hand, 'Jack of Shadows' (R Zelazny)

― dave q, Monday, 1 December 2003 11:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Too Loud A Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT

He tops himself at the end

― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Monday, 1 December 2003 11:31 (twenty-two years ago)

the best one ever (but not from a literary great or anything)
is in the middle of 'rules of attraction' and it's *horrible*.

― piscesboy, Monday, 1 December 2003 14:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I said 20th century only because I'm more familiar w/ that than 19th.

Also, I should've asked for the reasons these characters killed themselves.

― Leee Majors (Leee), Monday, 1 December 2003 23:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Kate Chopin, The Awakening. Damn, just checked and it was in 1899.

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 1 December 2003 23:28 (twenty-two years ago)

quentin bcz his watch wz on the blink</poor imitation of mark s>

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 1 December 2003 23:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Also the end of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

I don't remember names of characters, but it was the main character from both novels I mentioned that offs herself at the end. If I remember correctly.

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 1 December 2003 23:34 (twenty-two years ago)

They tried, though it didn't work: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Monday, 1 December 2003 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Ippolit in 'The Idiot', in his enormous suicide note: 'I'd like you to know that there is a limit to disgrace in the consciousness of one's own worthlessness and pwerlessness byond which a man cannot go, and after which he begins to feel a tremendous satisfaction in his own disgrace ... Humility, of course, is a great force in that sense, I admit it.'

But I thought it was cool cos when I was looking up that passage - I really wanted to post just something from it, because I used to love it so much -, I saw this, at the beginning of Ippolit's speech, that I didn't remember:

Ippolit suddenly began to read: '"A Necessary explanation. Epigraph: Apres moi le deluge". ... Damn it!' he exclaimed, as though he had burnt himself. 'Can I seriously have used such a stupid epigraph?'

― alsdkf (maryann), Tuesday, 2 December 2003 04:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Gibreel in the Satanic Verses

― possible m (mandinina), Tuesday, 2 December 2003 04:43 (twenty-two years ago)

not fiction, but amiri bakara's introduction to a 21 volume suicide note might be interesting.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 2 December 2003 05:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Almost forgot Clavell's Shogun ("and commit seppuku, while you're at it")

― nestmanso (nestmanso), Tuesday, 2 December 2003 05:01 (twenty-two years ago)

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