"I have become lost to the world" : The Depiction of Suicidality in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life

Abstract

This thesis examines suicidality how suicidality is depicted in fiction. While suicide has a long history of being featured in fictional narratives, not much research has gone into analysis which is not based on suicide prevention. The novels analyzed in this thesis are Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. The aim of this study is to investigate how the protagonists, Jude and Esther, deal with their suicidality and how their suicide attempts are depicted, as well as how their friends and families view their suicidality. The theoretical framework includes Andrew Bennett’s definition of suicide and his work on suicide in twentieth century and contemporary literature, as well as Émile Durkheim’s theory about suicide as a social fact. Following a theoretical overview, a background section on the authors is provided to contextualize the role of the author in suicide fiction. This thesis finds that Jude and Esther react to their suicidality similarly, such as feeling misunderstood and needing control, yet their personal backgrounds also influence the reasons for their suicidality in significant ways. As a result, the main underlying factor behind Jude’s suicidality is childhood abuse and its continued effect on his adult life, while Esther finds the mental consequences of academic shortcomings the reasons for her suicidality. Moreover, this thesis finds that Jude’s friends and family are very conflicted how to react to his suicidality. They must decide to either to ignore Jude’s problems to keep him close or force him into treatment he refuses and risk losing his confidence in them. On the other hand, Esther’s mother is an unsympathetic figure with a negative view of suicidality who refuses to understand her daughter’s plight.