Discussion Stanley's Demise

[Superdeterminist]

If you've seen the movie IT: Chapter Two or read the book, you may remember one of the characters, Stanley Uris, who commits suicide, at least in part because he's too afraid to face the fearsome clown again. I found this part of the story very refreshing, since I felt that it portrayed suicide in a more positive light, totally contrary to the typical, boring portrayal of the suicidal as morally deficient and cowardly. Did anyone else notice this? I felt that King (the author) was defending suicide as an act with this part of the story. Here is his note:



He begins the note by informing us "this isn't a suicide note" even though it essentially is one. This may have been done to avoid provoking negative reactions from the wider public. Even though this note is plainly cheesy and fictional, and no doubt far more profound notes have been written by real people, I appreciate this one because it's a rare example of suicide being represented in the public space, in a way that isn't just flat-out negative.

Are there any similar examples you can think of, where suicide is respected instead of the more usual, unimpressive, and cheap condemnation/mockery?​

 

[Life_and_Death]

idk if this is what youre looking for, but i love this song. it talks about how some lives are hard and maybe you should let them rest.
the chorus:
What a shame, what a shame
To judge a life that you can't change
The choir sings
The church bells ring
So won't you give this man his wings
What a shame
To have to beg you to see
We're not all the same
What a shame

 

[Superdeterminist]

idk if this is what youre looking for, but i love this song. it talks about how some lives are hard and maybe you should let them rest.

Yeah that's a really good example. Those lyrics capture the frustration perfectly. People can't or won't help, yet still see fit to judge when a struggling person commits suicide. And "we're not all the same" makes me think "we're not all going to make it" which is the hard truth IMO. For whatever meaning of 'making it' we want to use, there will be people who lose out, because the world is cruel. At the risk of sounding cultish, I view suicide as a respectable response to the cruel inequalities of life.​

 

[watchingthewheels]

John Galt's explanation in ATLAS SHRUGGED for being ready kill himself, should it come to that, comes to mind:

"If they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack—I mean, physical torture—before my eyes, in less than a week. I am not going to wait for that. At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there.... I don't have to tell you that if I do it, it won't be an act of self-sacrifice. I do not care to live on their terms. I do not care to obey them and I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that—and I do not care to exist without values."


Rand wrote about similar acts of people caught in dictatorships, who would rather "die on their feet than live on their knees":

"The same principle applies to a man, caught in a dictatorship, who willingly risks death to achieve freedom. To call his act a 'self-sacrifice,' one would
have to assume that he preferred to live as a slave. The selfishness of a man who is willing to die, if necessary, fighting for his freedom, lies in the fact that he is unwilling to go on living in a world where he is no longer able to act on his own judgment—that is, a world where human conditions of existence are no longer possible to him."

- Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness