"...what is it we need but more life? What does the infant need but more life? What does the bosom of his mother give him but life in abundance? What does the old man need, whose limbs are weak and whose pulse is low, but more of the life which seems ebbing from him? Weary with feebleness, he calls upon death, but in reality it is life he wants. It is but the encroaching death in him that desires death. He longs for rest, but death cannot rest; death would be as much an end to rest as to weariness: even weakness cannot rest; it takes strength as well as weariness to rest. How different is the weariness of the strong man after labour unduly prolonged, from the weariness of the sick man who in the morning cries out, 'Would God it were evening!' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning!' Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of. Never a cry went out after the opposite of life from any soul that knew what life is. Why does the poor, worn, out-worn suicide seek death? Is it not in reality to escape from death?--from the death of homelessness and hunger and cold; the death of failure, disappointment, and distraction; the death of the exhaustion of passion; the death of madness--of a household he cannot rule; the death of crime and fear of discovery? He seeks the darkness because it seems a refuge from the death which possesses him. He is a creature possessed by death; what he calls his life is but a dream full of horrible phantasms." -- George Macdonald, "Unspoken Sermons: Life"
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
Using metaphors of physical reality for psychological states can make it falsely appear more immutable that it is. It is possible to escape the burning buildings of the mind and knowing that you have agency over your ideas can be an essential part of the reframing/rethinking/challenging that can free you from suffering.
Letting people believe they are in a situation like floor 100 of the WTC and their flesh is literally burning with no escape could be outright harmful and irresponsible for those experiencing suicidal ideation.
> Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
A very good writer who committed suicide is probably a great person from whose experience we might learn, especially since they expressed what might be their internal anguish so eloquently.
He may be advocating for highly dysfunctional irrational thinking patterns that leads to suicide. They might be convincing, seductive and dangerous and should only be responsibly presented with clear context and challenge.
He's trying to share what the experience is like to promote empathy, so that suicide can be better understood by those with less personal experience with it. He's not advocating for people to commit suicide, just for ways to engage with the problem that doesn't further isolate and other those who are suffering.
I don’t think he was advocating anything. I think that misses the point. He was just trying to state the matter in a form that would allow people to understand the suffering better and have empathy for those who are in that type of suffering. Personally, I think he nailed it, and for that I am thankful.
I think to portray it otherwise would be to lose the message, and the fact that Wallace commited suicide should give credibility that the thoughts he wrote beforehand were those of an eventually suicidal man.
In my opinion, without the immutability of the situation the metaphor loses its meaning. People don't kill themselves because they feel they're in a situation they can get out of. I think it does more harm for those with suicidal ideation to ignore their feelings rather than validate them.
Sorry, I never read the quote as supporting suicide as a decision. But it's possible that a person contemplating suicide might see it that way.
I always read it as being about empathy. Explaining that sometimes a person's action probably have subjectively valid reasons that we should try to understand, or at least try to accept.
I read the gp comment's quote the same way that's why I shared this one.
It isn’t seen an condoning suicide. GPs point is more that his eventual suicide makes him less of an authority here. Bit like a relapsing addict trying to justify his drug use
> The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’
Yes, they do. Out of personal experience, when things are very bad and you have lost all hope of thing being able to get better ever, that is a strong incentive for suicide. Having any hope vs. none makes a crucial difference in whether life is bearable.
i think this opinion is simply wrong. a lot of people do kill themselves out of a feeling of hopelessness. and yes, for some death seems very appealing at some point especially given a painless method. every time i read something by dfw i get the impression that he was just a little bit too infatuated with his eloquence and putting style over substance.
You are overindexing on the word "hopelessness", which isn't even defined.
Are you claiming that a lot of people are attracted to their death more than repulsed from their life, or (as DFW wrote) that they recognize death as the best option?
Outside of a religious death cult with ideas of heaven, I don't see people with painless lives attracted to death.
I think you missed Macdonald's point. He's saying that "real life" is not simply the continuance of conscious existence, but "human thriving". If the man could achieve human thriving without health and without friends, then he'd be fine; it's precisely because he cannot achieve "human thriving" without health and without friends that that he says "I'm tired of life". Health problems, pain, and loneliness aren't life, but a form of death. So, MacDonald says, he's not tired of life -- he's tired of the continuance of conscious existence without life; he is, in fact, tired of death.
"Adults aged 75 and older have one of the highest suicide rates (20.3 per 100,000). Men aged 75 and older have the highest rate (42.2 per 100,000) compared to other age groups." [1]
