VV(18): Suicide

[Dave Monroe]

"The coroner's verdict, charitably, was death by accident.  Perhaps Melanie, 
exhausted by love, excited as at any premiere, had forgotten.  Adorned with 
so many combs, bracelets, sequins, she might have become confused in this 
fetish-world and neglected to add to herself the one inanimate object that 
would have saved her.  Itague thought it was suicide ..." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. 
ii, p. 414)

"The next day her body washed up on the beach." (V., Ch. 9, Sec. iii, p. 
272)

"Profane thought maybe it was tired of living." (V., Ch. 5, Sec. i, p. 111)

Cf. ...

"I doubt it was only firepower and aggrssiveness that beat the Herero during 
that 'complex and terrible' time.  I think the Hereros had as much to do 
with it as von Trotha did. [... W.P. Steenkamp, Is the South-West African 
Herero Committing Race Suicide?] attempts [...] to discount the notion, 
apparently widely-held at the time, that the Hereros were deliberately 
trying to exterminate themselves.  But I find that perfectly plausible, 
maybe not as a conscious conspiracy, but in terms of how a perhaps not 
completely Westernized people might respond." ("Letter to Thomas F. Hisrch," 
pp. 241-2)

"... there was a tribal mind at work out here, and it had chosen to
commit suicide." (GR, Pt. III, p. 317)

"... an evil Rocket for the World's suicide." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 727)


That last phrase always chokes me up, because, you know, one can easily 
imagine the arms race appearing as such, "maybe not as a conscious 
conspiracy," but ... but I tend to read these other suicides in allegorical, 
world-historical terms as well.  Let me know ...
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