"Writing About Suicide"

In this chapter, suicide is explored through the work done in Professor Jeffery Berman's class "Literary Suicide". This chapter includes several diaries written by one of his students who responded every week in class with an anonymus letter. These diaries are then explained through the student, Jonathan Schiff and Berman. Both agree that the class was useful when thinking about the relationship between writing and healing but they both also point out something very important.

Jonathan makes it clear that when he told other people that he was taking the class he was almost instantly shunned or looked at strangely. He felt nervous of revealing this information because he knew people would judge him in a way he did not want to be judged and this was because of the stigma that surrounds suicide.

Berman also points out that Jonathan, as well as the other students were able to share some very personal and meaningful work because they were in an environment that allowed them to freely express themselves. They were also in a place that they knew their ideas would be safe and accepted, much like the evidence from previous chapters that shows people heal better when they are involved in a community that accepts them.

I thought this chapter also related well with the chapter on pathographies and illnesses. That chapter expressed the idea that once someone became sick they became an "other". The same can be said about Jonathan weariness to talk about the class and the stigma that surrounds suicide. Jonathan didn't want to talk about his part in the class because he knew that he might be labeled as an unhealthy person. The stories from the other chapter also included this fear. Suicide is also seen as a shameful thing, something that shouldn't be talked about because it is so clearly the opposite of what a healthy person should do, which relates very much to how illnesses affected people in the other chapter. Instead of being healthy and "normal", these people are sick and therefore abnormal. I think chapter brings up a lot of interesting ideas of how we view suicide and all the mixed messages that surround it.