“Ah! it is but a little thing, death!” Not so little, Emma, but something that great writers of every generation have discussed and described at length, parsing and probing at the idea of death in all its many forms. For us, of all deaths in literature, suicides are often the most affecting, whether there is precise internal monologue or abject mystery surrounding the character’s intentions. Of course, we definitely do not endorse suicide in the real world, but in fiction, suicides can be beautiful, strange, and unbearably affecting, which are all things we love in literature. Many of the best works of literature include this kind of particular death, and so we scoured our shelves for the most notable suicides, choosing them based on the beauty of the prose, the strangeness of the circumstances, or the singular mindset of the character. Click through to see our list of ten spectacular suicides in literature, and let us know which of your favorites we’ve missed in the comments!
Ophelia, Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Hamlet’s jilted lover Ophelia drowns in a stream surrounded by the flowers she had held in her arms. Though Ophelia’s death can be parsed as an accident, her growing madness and the fact that she was, as Gertrude says, “incapable of her own distress.” And as far as we’re concerned, Gertrude’s monologue about Ophelia’s drowning is one of the most beautiful descriptions of death in Shakespeare.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Comments (28)
Seymour, Perfect Day for a Bananafish
Martin Eden:
“He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply would take him far down. He turned over and went down head first, swimming with all his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he went. His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will. But they did not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of life.
“Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly moved. He knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they took their upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This hurt was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling consciousness. Death did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.
“His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically and feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them beat and churn. He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the surface. He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was that? It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain–a flashing, bright white light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and interminable stairway. And somewhere at the bottom he fell into darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.”
How in the world did you miss Seymour Glass from “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”?
Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler!
Owen Browne [based on Donald Crowhurst] in Outerbrige Reach by Robert Stone
My Àntonia, like The Virgin Suicides, and features three. The most important is Mr. Shimerda’s: he goes out to the barn and shoots himself through the head with a rifle he fires with his toe, after which he is struck with an axe by a third party and frozen solid in a pool of his own blood by the extreme weather of his inhospitable new country. The counterpart is a suicide on a beautiful summer day: Àntonia is working in the fields when a tramp approaches her, talks to her briefly, asks for work, and then throws himself into the threshing machine. Without ever mentioning her father, Àntonia wonders why anyone would kill himself in the summer.
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JOI from Infinite Jest takes the cake. Most creative and smells delicious!
John the Savage from Brave New World. I concur with Salinger’s Seymour and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, too. Okonkwo from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
great idea, and well chosen, for the most part. But, really, no discussion of suicide in Western literature is credible with out even so much as a passing reference to Verter. “He had drunk only one glass of the wine. “Emilia Galotti” lay open upon his bureau.”
Isao Iinuma, from Mishima’s Runaway Horses – presages the author’s own manner of life and dying.
Howard W. Campbell Jr. from Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
Great (yet depressing) list! The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking “They better include Javert”. I was getting ready to fire off an indignant comment, but luckily he came in at number 10. You missed a spectacular rant, though.
How could Dido from The Aeneid not make this list? She fell upon the sword of her lover and had her sister burn her on the funeral pyre, for goodness sake. Quite tragic and memorable!
Little Father Time in Jude the Obscure – surely one of the most heart breaking suicides in literature?
Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” is a major example. Apparently it even sparked a cult of suicide imitators among fans of the book!
Sisterloving Quentin Compson? Anybody? That thing where he begins his last day by removing the hands from his father’s stopwatch? ouch. Well, maybe nobody reads Faulkner anymore.
Julian English in John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra goes on a calamitous and seemingly inexplicable path of personal destruction in about 48 hours, very vividly traced.
MAGNUS PYM! LeCarre’s A Perfect Spy
Also Ford’s eponymous Good Soldier.
QUENTIN. I thought Quentin immediately, whose suicide I have always regarded side-by-side with Septimus Smith’s. I notice at least one other person had this thought, though I can’t believe we’re the only ones. Too much Shakespeare on here for sure.
Socrates’ suicide by hemlock, as described by Plato in Phaedo.
Where the hell is Willie Loman? His death is arguably the most notable suicide in 20th century American literature.
Keeping this list to 10 is *very* tough. So many great suicides; how to choose only 10? I second the observation about Hedda Gabler being conspicuous by absence!
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Kirilov’s suicide from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed.
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