Subject: Re: suicide
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2000 - 02:54:06 EST
Robbie's mention of his father has abashed all us
glib philosophers of death into a flight for cover:
like the cat of reality appearing suddenly among
a flock of sparrows. And no one is running faster
than Jim. I never saw him in such elaborately
disclaiming mode before.
The fact remains that he HAS been the main
proponent of suicide-as-cowardice & that this
IS quite a common knee jerk to the subject.
Yet as Robbie points out, if you contemplate for a bit
the actual mechanics of your own death - whether
self-inflicted or not - there's an almost irresistible
need to avert the eyes. The human gift for denial
reaches its height in the matter of death & any stick
will do to beat those who remind us of it - including
the insult 'coward'. The token (& extremely tiresome)
handful of paracetomol is not at all the same thing
as the shotgun to the forehead & contempt for
the first should not seep over into the second -
no matter how often we're asked to abandon easy
emotionalism.
Although some demonstrations do go wrong, I agree
with Robbie that most completed suicides can arise
only out of something close to psychosis. I think
most of us acknowledge this. Seymour's suicide
is finally inexplicable - except as psychosis.
Matt's experiment illustrates the ambiguity:
it could go either way, suicide or uxoricide.
And that seems to me to remove old Seymour
from any sort of universal relevance. His ending
does not proceed from his beginning. Maybe Jerry
was simply going for a nice New Yorker twist
in the tail to drum in the punters.
I think that's why I find the whole Glass menagerie
too remote, too precious, too special, to be
genuinely moving. I've known Holden & I've known
Sergeant X & their respective girls. But I never came
across a Seymour or a Franny. I'm sure there are such
people, just as you get the occasional bearded lady
or Siamese twin. But as characters they don't speak
to my condition.
Scottie B.
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