Suicide Storyin a

A Beautiful Book Terrible Topicabout a

Suicide Storyin a

Suicide Club, Part 1

B oss i ran onto a queer bunchin the back room of a saloon on william street

the other night there were six of themtwo cockroachesa grasshoppera fleaand two cricketsthey have what they call a suicide clubnot the sort our oldfriend r l s made famousthe members which intend to killthemselves but each member of thisclub has committed suicide alreadythey were once humansas i was myselfat least i was a poetafter they killed themselves their soulstransmigrated into the bodiesof the insects mentioned and so they got together andformed a club the other night the grasshopper told why he killed himselfit was a misunderstandingwith one i loved he saidwhich impelled me to rash actshe and i were walking down a countryroad and i got some gravel in oneof my shoes shortly afterward weboarded a trolley car would youmind i asked her if i took my shoe offand shook out the gravelhelp yourself she saidjust as i got my shoe off we passeda glue factoryi hastily put the shoe on again by thetime it was on again we were well pastthe glue factorythe period during which the shoe was offand the period during which wewere passing the glue factory exactlysynchronizedshe did not see the glue factoryand refused to believe there had beenone in the neighborhood i couldnever explain a month lateri killed myself tough luckold top said flea i will nowtell you why i took the fatalplunge to be continued

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying).

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Suicide Club, Part 2

C ontinued from thursdayspaper yes said the flea i willtell you how it was icommitted suicide and trans-

migratedinto the body of an insect i wasthe india rubber man in a circus sideshow and fell in love with apair of beautiful siamese twinspublic opinion was againstme marrying both of themalthough both of them loved me as iloved them both youmust choose between them said the manager what god has joined togetherlet no man put asunder i said butpublic opinion was too much for mebut the surgical operation whichsevered them changed theirdispositions you cannot fool withwithout running some suchrisk when they were cut apart one ofthem eloped with the surgeonwho had done the work and the othermarried an interne in thehospital they had a doublewedding and i slew myself that nightwell said one o the crickets i willnow tell you how i shuffled offthis moral coil andtransmigrated into thebody of a cricket and became a memberof this suicide club to becontinued

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Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps. Of an apartment-building manager who had killed himself I was told that he had lost his daughter five years before, that he had changed greatly since, and that that experience had “undermined” him.

Suicide Club, Part 3

C ontinued from yesterdayspaper yes said the first cricket iwill tell you how it was i

committed suicide andmy soul transmigrated into thebody of an insect and i became amember of this has been club my fatherbelonged to a religious sect whichforbids shaving and i wasbrought up in that way norazor ever touched my face when i wasforty years old i had a beard that hungdown to my knees it was red and glossy i went around the countryposing as a doctor for a medicine company hitting the tank towns in awagon and giving a spiel andplaying on the banjo i did well asmy beard attractedcrowds and was happyprosperous until one day amalignant man whohad just bought six bottles of tonicfor five dollars made of roots herbsand natures own remediescontaining nomineral ingredients and brewed fromjuniper leaves hazel roots choke cherries and the bark of thewild cohosh exactly as the indians made it for athousand yearsin the unpathed forests before thepale face came said to me mistercan i ask you a question yes isaid i have nothing to conceal i am onthe level if one wine glass full beforemeals does not give you an appetitetake two or threemister he says the question ispersonal go ahead i says i am theseventh sonof a seventh son a soothsayer and aseer i can tell by the wayyou chew tobacco you have livertrouble i will make aspecial price to you fourteenbottles for ten dollars cash no he saidit is about your beard it grew i toldhim through using this medicinemy chin was bald atbirth it is a specific for erysipelasbotts neuralgia stomach trouble lossof appetite hearts disease dandruff andfalling hair thirty bottles to youfor twenty dollars and i will throwin an electric beltmister he said i only want to ask

you if you sleepwith all your beard outsideof the coversunder the covers when you go tobed at night and he gives me an evilgrin and went on inever thought of itbefore and just had gone to bed and sleptas a rule but that night when iclimbed into bed i thought o the oldmans question i spread all mybeard outside of the covers and itwas immediately apparent to methat i did not have the habit ofsleeping with it that way then i put itunder the covers and wasno less certain that i did notsleep with it that way i worriedabout it till morning and each way iput it seemed atonce to be the wrong waythe next night it was the samething i could not keep fromthinking about it i got no sleep at alland became the mere shadow of myformer self it so preyed upon methat at last i saw i must eithershave off the beard or end it all but icould not shave off the beardwithout deserting the religious principlesinstilled into me by my father and so itook the fatal plunge hard lines saidthe second cricket i willnow relate the circumstances whichled up to my suicide to becontinued

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There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most obvious ones were not the most powerful. Rarely is suicide committed (yet the hypothesis is not excluded) through reflection. What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of “personal sorrows” or of “incurable illness.” These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently.

Suicide Club, Part 4

C ontinued from lastsaturdays paper well said thesecond cricket the way i hap-pened to

commit suicide and undergotransmigration andthus qualify for a member of this clubwas this when i was ahuman i was wedded to a lady whosemother had a very strongand domineering character shelived with us night afternight i would lie awake thinkingup schemes to get evenwith her i thought upsome lovely schemes but whenmorning came my nerve wouldleave i never had the courage toput them into execution finallythe thought came to me that if i wasa ghost i could haunt her andshe would no come back i slewmyself but alas my soul transmigratedinto the body of a cricket andif you had ever seen that strong andbitter old woman slaying spiders andcrickets you could realizethe despair that has settled down on mesince too bad said oneof the cockroaches i will now narrate theevents which led up to mydetermination to take the leap into thedarkness to be continued

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In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let’s not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to everyday words. It is merely confessing that that “is not worth the trouble.” Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.

Suicide Club, Part 5

C continued from tuesdayspaper i cant say the first of thetwo cockroaches remarked that i

had any good reason forslaying myself i had done everything else at least once i was ayoung man possessed of acons iderab l e for tune which i t was my on lyoccupation to dissipate wheneverything else palled itook up theology i made a betwith another student that the soulwas not immortal the only way tosettle it was to die and find out we bothdid well fellows we both lost mineproved to be immorta l for here i am but h i swas not completely disappeared andhas never been heard o againwhich shows you never can tell andyet i am still interested ingames o chance my story saidthe s e cond cockroach break ing in i s far moreinteresting and far sadder i will narrate it to beconcluded in my next

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What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.

Assisting Suicide

at a

W ell boss i have justbeen assisting at a suicide i think thegentleman who killed

himself wasquite right to do so tooi went into the kitchen of anup town hotel the otherevening for a bite to eat and afteri had dined i thoughti would look the place over and ifi found a room that appealed to me iwould spend the night therethe room i got into was alreadyinfested by a little old bald headed fellowwith scared eyes and a face likea petrified turnip who washunched up under a reading lampreading abible all of a sudden he gave ajump and said gawd gawd there itis again i saw a puff ofsmoke floating across thetable in front of him it seemed to comefrom nowhere in particular smokesmoke cried the old man i amhaunted by smoke and ashe spoke another puff of smokesuddenly appeared from nowhere onthe table in front of himgawd gawd he cried spare me spareme do not persecute me this wayand i will give all the money to charityi will give it to the redcross or any church youmay designate i knowi did wrong to burn down thatbuilding for theinsurance money but how was ito know there was anyone in it idid not plan a murder a thirdpuff of smoke seemed to start out ofhis own shoulder and floated infront of his eyes and a fourthpuff hit him on his bald head and madea little veil in front of his facegawd gawd he cried and threwhimself on the rug and began topray with his face hidden ithought to myself thosepuffs of smoke are peculiar thereisn’t anything on fire inhere and then i got a whiff of itand it smelled like tobacco smokethen i saw something that lookedlike a gray globe floating from thedirection of the bathroom door itdrifted across the room and hitthe reading lamp and vanished with a

puff of smoke looked at thebathroom door and thought iheard some one chuckle over there andthen i saw another gray globe ofsmoke forming at the keyhole itdetached itself from the door andfloated across the roomi crawled noiselessly under the bathroom door it was one of those bathrooms between two sleepingrooms and there were a couple ofchuckle headed young fellows sittingon the floor laughing tothemselves both were about halfsoused and they were having a goodtime one of them had a slender hollowbrass curtain rod and he was soapingthe end of it andsticking it into the keyhole then hewould fill his mouth with cigarettesmoke and blow a soap bubble whichdrifted into the old mans room whatis he doing now said one of them heis on the floor praying said theother taking the rod out of thekeyhole and looking through let meblow a couple said the first youngman you are too soused said thefirst one gawd gawd said the voicefrom the room i had just left i amhaunted by ghostly smoke i will liveright all the rest of my life if youonly let me off this timegive him another bubble said thefirst young man he has got itcoming to him evidently sothey gave him half a dozen morebubbles the noisein the haunted mans room ceased forsome minutes what is he doing nowsaid the first young man i cant seehim said the second one just thenthere came a kicking kind of a noiseon the wall i went into thehaunted mans room and found hiscloset door was open i went in and hewas just dying he had hanged himselfto a hook on the wall with a trunkcord those two young fellows hadjust the wrong man for their littlepractical joke orjust the right man if you want tolook at it that way iwent away from there at once notwishing to be on hand if therewas any investigation yoursfor conscience and coincidenceand may they never meet

In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us not exaggerate in this direction. In a man’s attachment to life there is something stronger than all the ills in the world. The body’s judgment is as good as the mind’s, and the body shrinks from annihilation. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death, the body maintains its irreparable lead. In short, the essence of that contradiction lies in what I shall call the act of eluding because it is both less and more than diversion in the Pascalian sense. Eluding is the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion that constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope. Hope of another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.Thus everything contributes to spreading confusion. Hitherto, and it has not been wasted effort, people have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments. One merely has to refuse to be misled by the confusions, divorces, and inconsistencies previously pointed out. One

must brush everything aside and go straight to the real problem. One kills oneself because life is not worth living, that is certainly a truth - yet an unfruitful one because it is a truism. But does that insult to existence, that flat denial in which it is plunged come from the fact that it has no meaning?

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The strongest risk factor for suicide is depression.

Suicide can be prevented through

education and public awareness.

Research has shown medications and therapy to be

effective suicide prevention.

80% of people that seek treatment for depression are

treated successfully.

Last year SAVE received 810 requests

for information from 72 countries.

Last year SAVE educated 10,618 youth

& parents on depression and suicide prevention.

Each suicide produces at least six, and as many as hundreds of “survivors,” or people left behind to

grieve. Based on the 766,042 suicides from 1982 through 2007, it

can be estimated that the number of survivors in the

U.S. is 4.6 million. (AAS)

80% of people that seek treatment for depression are

treated successfully.

Suicide is a very serious issue, before taking that final step consider talking to someone who has beeen there and found their way back, it could make all the difference. If you know someone you believe to be dealing with suicidal thoughts or actions, talk to them and provide support, you could be the person to turn their life around. At the end of the day remember all life matters.

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Colophon:

Text by: Don Marquis, The annotated Archy & MehitabelAlbert Camus, Absurdity & Suicide

Facts found at: http://www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=705d5df4-055b-f1ec-3f66462866fcb4e6

http://www.spanusa.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=0D213AD4-C50A-1085-4DD96CE0EEED52A0

www.afsp.org/files/College_Film/factsheets.pdf

Illustartions by Nakware Howard, & Inspired by http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.acf.org/images/American_Chestnut_Tree.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.acf.org/Legacy_Tree.php&usg=__T1LRwmoogmAV-fDWGoXpVmBsj98=&h=315&w=295&sz=30&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=PI5AN4f_EHTqMM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=122&ei=7ns0Tf_ML472gAe38bCgCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtree%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1889%26bih%3D970%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disc h:1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=291&oei=7ns0Tf_ML472gAe38bCgCw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=55&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0&tx=80&ty=55