Year: 1987 Source: Annual Meeting of the American Association of Suicidology, (20th: 1987: San Francisco), p.449-450 SIEC No: 19880909

In this summary, the author uses Ernest Hemingway, Nikolay Gogol, & Virginia Woolf as examples of Durkheim’s classification of suicide applied to individual cases when it is expanded to encompass individuality. Hemingway, for example, illustrates egoistic suicide. The themes of his life & stories were courage & machismo, a form of individualism. He had weak commitments throughout his life, in accordance with Durkheim’s theory, but managed well till self-oriented pursuits became impossible. (GW)