Suicides, Shmuicides

I thought I was going to like it. It was very original and ambitious, trying to elucidate, more or less, the reasons one commits suicide, but I think that may have been the problem. Also, it might just be that the author is wrong.

To begin, Suicides, by Guy de Maupassant, tells the story of M. X----, a 57 year old man who takes his own life in a “mysterious” set of circumstances. He then goes on to explain that the “mystery” takes place when there is no impetus or final straw; we assume financial troubles or broken marriages are to blame, when sometimes it is merely “the slow succession of the little vexations of life.” And he’s right, we do assume that he killed himself because his wife left him for another man, or because her business went bankrupt, but mostly because they happened immediately to these persons’ deaths.

Beyond that, however, I do not disagree with him. Surely there must be some people whose suicides are merely the result of an ongoing list of grievances, which finally becomes too much to bear, however I think M. X---- fails to show the true weight of these individuals’ plight. Plagued by monotony and “bad digestion,” M. X---- dies, like many men according to Maupassant, while “we search in vain to discover some great sorrow in their lives.”

To be fair, I cannot say with any certainty what the author hoped to accomplish. Perhaps he’s turning his own suicidal sentiments into a piece of art in order to deal with them, or maybe he’s trying to discourage suicide by making it seem silly or stupid. Whatever his goal, what I find the piece does is trivialize the suffering and depression that drives people to suicide.

Yes, there are, most likely, some individuals who have no reason more than a great boredom with repetition and a fear of travel to end their lives, and do so. But most, I would say, deal with terminal illness or intractable pain, depression and mental illness, and seriously traumatic, life-altering events, and this piece—which I think is not even particularly well-written given its lack of flow and awkward transitioning between background narration and M. X----‘s note—does not even acknowledge these others with anything other than a comment to the effect that we assume these factors and are wrong.

Ultimately, I may be wrong to critique a work on its truth, but I think when the innate untruths could potentially have an effect on the reader, especially the dramatic effects it could have on someone who would be enticed to read a story entitled Suicides, I have justifiable cause.

(To read the story yourself, go to http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/bookid.1134/sec.1/.)