Year: 1975 Source: American Imago, v.32, no.4, (1975), p.389-416 SIEC No: 19841597

Explores suicide through the medium of literary characters who took their lives: Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Ophelia, Werther, Smerdyakov, Chekov’s Constantine & Mann’s Aschenbach, Peeperkorn & Naphta. Suicide is viewed as an act of ego strength, a triumph over destiny & an exercise of self-determination in which the alternatives for the individual would most often be meaningless or a vegetative existence. By suicide the characters emerge with a strong ego analagous to that of the tragic hero.