Confronting Suicide

This book attempts to shed some light on the origins and significance of representations of suicide in selected literary works by Albert Camus and Hermann Hesse. Its working hypothesis is that, in complex ways, the author's experience enters into the figures of suicidal situations he presents. The main part of the book investigates the extent to which writing can be seen as an attempt at mastery of the writer's lived experience through forms of projection of his self as the fictional Other. The evidence used to demonstrate links between the authors' personal experience and their art comes from their private letters, journals, essays, and contemplations. The findings from close readings of Steppenwolf, Klein und Wagner, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and Le Malentendu are then compared and contrasted, drawing on the previous exploration of the authors' backgrounds, to make connections between Camus' and Hesse's respective experience of suicidal thoughts and the attitudes each of them puts into play in their art. This book should be useful for any student of literature, particularly those with an interest in the narrative act as sub-conscious self-objectification and self-transcendence.