Life and Other Calamities

In 1962, in the context of Vatican II, the Catholic Church changed its position regarding suicide, absolving those who take their own lives from what was once perceived as their final sin. The Church reasoned that suicide was a mental illness and that suicide victims could not be held accountable for their actions because their unstable minds confused the notions of life and death. Elizabeth Bishop's Crusoe in England and Sylvia Plath's The Hanging Man both introduce psychologically destabilized speakers with warped perceptions of existence.

The speaker in Bishop's poem is Robinson Crusoe from Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Crusoe doesn't mention suicide, but he is in a state of depression: "I'm old. / I'm bored, too"; "The living soul has dribbled away./ My eyes rest on it and pass on." Crusoe lives in the past. Nine stanzas, more than half the poem, are spent depicting his days on the deserted island. This part of his life is a miserable one: "I often gave way to self-pity"; "the more/ pity I felt, the more I felt at home." Yet he undeniably misses this former existence, recalling "each nick and scratch by heart".

It's Crusoe's loneliness that makes his time on the island so painful: "Beautiful, yes, but not much company." It nearly drives him mad: "The questioning shrieks/ the equivocal replies/ over a ground of hissing rain/ and hissing ambulating turtles/ got on my nerves." In need of companionship, Crusoe attributes human characteristics to the surrounding fauna: "His [the goat's] pupils, horizontal, narrowed up/ and expressed [...] a little malice." Even in his dreams, he confuses animals with humans: "I'd dream of things/ like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat."

On the brink of insanity, Crusoe finally finds company in Friday. His joy is so great that he can't fully express it: "Friday was nice." The statement is so bland that one suspects Crusoe is hiding something about the relationship, perhaps a sexual aspect: "I wanted to propagate my kind, / and so did he, I think, poor boy"; "Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body." Crusoe seems to be in love with Friday. This is why he lives in the past. He can't go on without Friday, and this part of his life is "un-rediscoverable": "And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles/ seventeen years ago come March."

In Plath's The Hanging Man, the speaker does commit suicide. He sees death as a painful elevation: "By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me." However, he doesn't regret his decision: "If he were I, he would do what I did." The speaker views life as confusing and dark: "The nights snapped out of sight." His death, on the other hand, is described as calm, "a world of bald white days". It is "shadeless" and "desert", meaning that no threat can come near. Life is usually associated with light, and death, with darkness, but here the symbols are inverted.

Elizabeth Bishop's Crusoe in England and Sylvia Plath's The Hanging Man both feature speakers with tired spirits and ill minds. Crusoe may not have died yet, but, like the hanging man, he's stopped living a long time ago.

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