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Suicide: always a tragedy?
JMS PearceHull, England The tragedy of suicide is well expressed in “The romantic suicide: Karoline von Günderrode” by Nicolás Roberto Robles.1 We all try hard to understand this act. Self-destructive urges are an ubiquitous but often ignored or suppressed aspect of all human life. But what makes a person take their own life is often…
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Melville’s Bartleby: An absurd casualty
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He did not want to be pinned down as an existentialist or an absurdist, or indeed a nihilist. Nevertheless, he is well known for coining the expression ‘the absurd hero’. Camus used the Greek myth of Sisyphus to illustrate this idea. Sisyphus’s…
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The romantic suicide: Karoline von Günderrode
Nicolás Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Suicide, often occurring as an impulsive gesture or from underlying depression, has long been an important cause of death among young people, as exemplified within recent memory by the wave of suicides that followed the death of Marilyn Monroe. Historically, in the preromantic period, it was precipitated by the suicide of…
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A love-driven model of suicide prevention
Kate BaggottSt. Catharines, Ontario, Canada Burgoyne Bridge reconstruction – Cranes mid bridge. Photo by Matt Clare. Taken 2016.CC BY 2.0. The suicide barrier on the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto is called the Luminous Veil. The beauty of the title is that it is intentional and intelligent. Construction of the barrier started in 2003…
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What could have been
Gordon SunDowney, California, United States By Stephanie Chen and Gordon Sun Every year, there are 400 stories like these. The second-year medical student. The social butterfly of her 106 classmates, yet her bubbly personality masks the loneliness of living on one coast after spending the first twenty-five years of her life on…
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No laughing matter
Shafiqah Samarasam Subang Jaya, Malaysia Portrait of Robin Williams. Creative Commons. “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” These were the words of Robin Williams, the man whose own laughter was enough to make us laugh. In a world where tragedy occurs every day, his words helped us to…
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Death and new-doctor eyes
Katrina GenuisVancouver, Canada With slim cuts to her wrists, she came into the emergency room and said she wanted to die. “This is clearly a cry for attention,” others said. “Send the new doctor to stitch her up.” I sat by her bed with a 30-gauge lidocaine-filled needle and 4.0 nylon sutures, and began…
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“…One must imagine Sisyphus happy”
Katerina DimaPreveza, Greece “Sysphus, carrying the weight of his agony, forever.” Sisyphus, 1548, TitanMuseo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Ancient Greek mythology teems with stories of morality, despair, and the philosophy of the absurd. No story, however, had a greater impact on this young, impressionable medical student than the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was a…
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Suicide in medical school
Trevor KleeCambridge, MA, United States Depression and suicide are difficult subjects to write about because they are unpleasant and have at least a faint tinge of moral failure. Moreover, the enormity of the feelings involved dwarfs the attempts to portray them in writing. Perhaps the best written description of suicidal ideation comes from David Foster…
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Sophocles’ Antigone and the complexities of suicide
Grant GillettRobin HankeyOtago, New Zealand Antigone Leads Oedipus out of ThebesCharles François JalabertMusée des Beaux Arts, Marseilles, France Suicide has been a recurring human tragedy for as long as human affairs have been recorded. The principal suicide in Antigone does not at first pass seem relevant to the twentieth century, as it arises in the…