An Ideological Death: Suicide in Israeli Literature

Chapter 6. Suicide in Fiction: Suicide in Life?

209 Albert Camus has written that there is only one real question posed by the act of suicide: whether life is worth living. In the context of Hebrew literature, the image of suicide poses the question: is life worth living in Israeli society? More accurately, the image challenges the construction of the Israeli national narrative, questioning aspects of the presentation of Israeli myths and the gap between these dreams and the reality. Suicide in fictional texts can be tragic or heroic, expressing grand emotion—capturing the sensibility of jilted lovers, conveying the dedication of romance, and celebrating devotion to honor. Passion and valor characterize depictions in Western literature. The literary suicide in these narratives generates great sadness or inspires feelings of loyalty on the reader’s part. Our feelings are controlled by the portrayal of the death, the character’s role within the plot, even our own experiences of the fictional situation. But these kinds of literary suicide can also function as moral lessons, serving to inspire the reader to follow an ideology and suggesting the highest ideals of a society that should be emulated. In Judeo-Christian societies suicide is generally prohibited, sometimes on legal but always on moral grounds. Cultural traditions within these societies have evolved representations of suicide in popular literature, journalism, religious texts, art, and other mediums which engage with the specific culture’s views on suicide, inculcating the expected moral view. But these mediums are also able to engage with the dominant attitude to suicide. As this book has shown, depictions of suicide in literary texts might Suicide in Fiction: Suicide in Life? chapter 6 210 chapter 6 propose alternative codes that outweigh the prevailing social conventions such as intimating that heroism or excessive emotion can transcend the moral norm. In the Bible, Samson’s suicide is an act of sacrifice so that he can protect his people, while King Saul falls on his sword as an expression of his despair at losing a battle. Shakespeare’s portrayal of Romeo’s and Juliet’s suicides conveys the couple’s deep love because of which they preferred to die rather than live apart, while Lady Macbeth’s suicide is motivated by her guilt and despair. Goethe’s Werther commits suicide when he is rejected by his paramour, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina leaps in front of a train when she feels abandoned. In some cultures and situations suicide represents honor; in others it signifies great tragedy, so to understand a culture’s relationship to suicide, or even suicide’s role within the text, it becomes necessary to understand the established cultural systems and symbols within which the author is operating. Even within a single society these distinctions can be finely tuned. For example, in late-nineteenthcentury Victorian England, suicide in high culture was a romantic, heroic gesture, while in low culture it was a sign of squalor and degradation.1 Within a different prevailing moral framework, one that considers suicide merely a banal approach to death, literary depiction in that culture will also reflect social perceptions. For example, in 46 b.c.e. in Utica, Cato the Younger committed a gruesome act of suicide after falling out with Caesar. In that society, suicide was a socially acceptable mode of political protest, and later his death was commemorated and viewed as a victory against Caesar’s tyranny. Crucially, the significance of suicide in texts is not only inextricably connected to our ideas about the act of suicide but also to previously established, recognized and accepted beliefs held in society. Consequently, the way we receive depictions of suicide is culturally rooted. Evidently literary suicide acts on our emotions. But it can do more. The self-sacrifice of a heroic military figure reinforces our perception of his earlier heroism. Portraying the suicide of a prostitute bolsters perceptions of her immoral lifestyle. The suicide of an adulterous woman coming as it does at the end of her betrayal, though tragic, emphasizes a morality code that frowns upon adultery and sexual promiscuity, whereas a woman who commits suicide in order to protect her virginity, or a soldier who is captured and commits suicide rather than betray his comrades, become lauded moral examples influencing our cultural, moral, and suicide in fiction 211 even political values.2 The placement of suicide in the text can generate alternative perceptions—ones which make us explore, or even reject, accepted cultural norms. A soldier...