History DrivenToSuicide / Literature

* Esther Greenwood in ''The Bell Jar'' attempts suicide a number of times before being hospitalized. Given the time period (TheFifties), Esther is terrified of the common reality that a married woman spends the rest of her life in the kitchen and giving up everything she ever worked towards. After finishing college, she has no idea what to do with her life and becomes saddened by the fact that "the one thing [she] was good at was winning scholarships and prizes and that era is coming to an end." After trying to slit her wrists in a warm bath and trying to swim out into the ocean, she crawls into a hole in her basement and downs a bottle of sleeping pills.

* ''Literature/TheOutsider'': Fred Peterson decides to hang himself after he loses his entire family in less than a week (first his youngest son, Frank, is brutally murdered, then his wife succumbs to a hearth attack, and finally his second son, Ollie, is killed by the police after Ollie kills Terry Maitland, the mans suspected of murdering Frank).

* In ''Discworld/IShallWearMidnight'' by Mr. Petty, who was Driven To Suicide after he went on a drunken rampage, bludgenoned his pregnant thirteen-year-old daughter and caused her to miscarry. Fortunately Tiffany arrives in time.

* In ''Literaature/BeautifulLosers'', Edith kills herself by hiding in the elevator shaft so she would be crushed by it. Her motivations why are never explored.

* ''Literature/{{Gone}}'' series.
** Mary. It doesn't take, and she reappears outside of the FAYZ.
** Panda, by the beginning of ''Lies''.
** Jasmine.
** Orc tries in ''Plague''.
** Hunter in ''Plague'' with the bugs.

* ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Moff Sarn Shild kills himself after his fleet is defeated at Nar Shaddaa and he's been summoned for an inquiry on Coruscant, knowing that he's just delaying the inevitable otherwise.

* In Creator/GKChesterton's ''Paradise of Thieves'', Literature/FatherBrown discovers that someone was carrying a bottle of poison. Discovering who is it takes a little longer.

* In Creator/JohnCWright's ''Literature/CountToATrillion'', Captain Grimaldi [[spoiler:At least according to Blackie]]

* ''Drowning Anna'' by Sue Mayfield is the story of Anna, a popular, promising student at a British private school whose life is just about perfect until, for unknown reasons, she is singled out for bullying by her class's AlphaBitch, Hayley. The first chapter is told from Anna's point of view as she attempts suicide with a combination of vodka and antidepressants; the remaining chapters alternate between the perspectives of Frances, Anna's mother, and Melanie, Anna's best (and eventually, only) friend. The tale of Anna's torment is told in flashback and through a series of journal entries read by Frances in which Anna describes, in harrowing detail, the emotional and physical abuse she's suffered at the hands of Hayley and her clique, from name-calling and public humiliation to physical assaults during P.E. class. By the end of the book, Anna's condition has stabilized, but she is still in a coma and it is still uncertain whether she will survive.
* ''Slam Book'', a 1987 young-adult novel by ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'' creator Ann M. Martin, details the feud between wannabe queen-bee Anna and her nemesis, [[TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior budding alcoholic]] Paige, as it plays out in the pages of Anna's titular slam book. Anna devises a scheme to humiliate Paige by forging messages from Paige in the slam book to Cheryl, the class outcast. When Cheryl realizes she's been tricked, she kills herself by slitting her wrists, and Anna, who had thought a slam book would be her ticket to popularity, is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone wracked with guilt]].

* ''Literature/{{Patternist}}'': TheAgeless biomancer Anyanwu wills herself dead the night after the TimeAbyss body-surfer Doro is killed permanently. It's left {{ambiguous|Situation}} whether it's because she's tired of outliving her descendants and no longer needs to protect them from Doro's predation, because she's lost the only other immortal being in her centuries-long life, or because she doesn't want to be part of the SuperSupremacist future that [[spoiler:Mary]] is building.

** A few years after graduating Shiz it's mentioned that Milla is miserable as Boq's wife in Nest Hardings. When Boq sends Fiyero letters every Lurinemas, they mention that she has had at least one failed suicide attempt that year.

* Subverted in ''Literature/{{Ghostgirl}}''. One of the characters died from SelfHarm, but ''not'' from the injuries. She accidentally died of infection.

* At the end of dystopian novel ''Literature/OfMiceAndMooshaber'', widowed Mrs Mooshaber who is poor, widowed and terrorised by her children poisons herself and dies. It happens after TheReveal that she is [[spoiler:rightful ruler of the oppressed country, Duchess Augusta, and she dies just before she returns on her throne.]]

* At the end of dystopian novel ''Literature/NatalieMooshabrsMice'', poor and old widowed Mrs Mooshabr poisons herself and dies. It happens after TheReveal that she is [[spoiler:rightful ruler of the oppressed country, Duchess Augusta, and she dies just before she ruturns on her throne.]]

* ''ElijahOfBuxton'': Down in the United States, Elijah comes across a group of slaves chained up inside a cabin, all of them wearing just a robe. After they shoot down all of Elijah's idea to free them, the woman asks Elijah to leave Mr. Leroy's gun with them. Elijah soon catches on as to why she asked that.

%% * ''Literature/{{Gone}}'' series.
%% ** Mary. It doesn't take, and she reappears outside of the FAYZ.
%% ** Panda, by the beginning of ''Lies''.
%% ** Jasmine.
%% ** Orc tries in ''Plague''.
%% ** Hunter in ''Plague'' with the bugs.

* ''Drowning Anna'' by Sue Mayfield is the story of Anna, a popular, promising student at a British private school whose life is just about perfect until, for unknown reasons, she is singled out for bullying by her class's AlphaBitch, Hayley. The first chapter is told from Anna's point of view as she attempts suicide with a combination of vodka and antidepressants; the remaining chapters alternate between the perspectives of Frances, Anna's mother, and Melanie, Anna's best (and eventually, only) friend. The tale of Anna's torment is told in flashback and through a series of journal entries read by Frances in which Anna describes, in harrowing detail, the emotional and physical abuse she's suffered at the hands of Hayley and her clique, from name-calling and public humiliation to physical assaults during P.E. class. By the end of the book, Anna's condition has stabilized, but her recovery remains uncertain.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's story "All The Troubles Of The World", [[DeusEstMachina Multivac]] comes uncomfortably close to destruction because of a seemingly random act--a potential disaster considering how much of the work of maintaining civilization has been dumped onto the computer. [[spoiler: The story ends with Multivac being asked what it itself wants, and replying "i wish to die"--implying that the "random act" was a [[ThanatosGambit suicidal plan]] by Multivac that failed... this time.]]
* In ''Everything Is Illuminated'' by Jonathan Safran Foer, [[spoiler: Alex's grandfather]] commits suicide after 'Jonfen' leaves, being confronted with his past , where he saved his life and his son's, at the expense of his best friend's, at the hands of the Nazi's. [[spoiler: To bury his guilt, he built himself an anti-Semitic persona, despite being Jewish himself.]] This is one of the few differences between the book and the movie, where in the movie he does so before he leaves. He is found in a bathtub by [[spoiler: his grandson]] with his wrists slit.

* The book ''Seventeen'' deals with a seventeen year old girl who decides to kill herself in seven days if her life doesn't improve. Her best friend abandons her to become a model, her other friend is raped, she's convinced that she's never been good at anything except diving, and her boyfriend dumps her on the side of the road when she refuses to sleep with him. [[spoiler: She goes straight to a bridge and jumps off. Halfway down, she changes her mind, puts her diving training into use, and swims to shore. The book ends without telling us if her life improves.]]

* At the end of ''Dreamspeaker'', Peter hangs himself, while the mute "He who would Sing" [[AteHisGun shoots himself in the mouth]] with a shotgun, in gruesome detail.
* A [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werther_effect famous]] example: in Goethe's ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', Werther shoots himself in the head to escape an unbearable love triangle (he is in love with a married woman). A semi-BungledSuicide, in that he does not die instantly, but suffers for twelve hours before finally dying.