Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 October 22

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October 22

Javert's suicide in Les Miserables, in the overall context of suicide

Now, I have been warned by Jayron32 on the Entertainment desk: "No one can provide references that explain why fictional characters acted in a certain manner." (Not personally warned, just noted his explanation in hatting others' questions along those lines). But I think major, well-studied works of literature would be an exception, wouldn't they? When it comes to shakespeare, to use an obvious example, I would think there would be a reasonable amount of academic analysis of the characters in his plays, and the supposed logic of their actions. My question is about Les Miserables, for a start, and I suspect there may very well be scholarly analysis on Victor Hugo's work. Also, my question asks whether what happened in fiction ever happens in reality.

It is in that context that I ask about the suicide of Javert in Les Miserables, as it would fit in the wider context of the phenomenon of Suicide. I can, in a sense, understand Javert's logic. He had dedicated his life to enforcing the law, and encountered a case where the the moral ability to enforce the law failed him. He was pinned into an ethical corner. (In the musical, he sings "and my thoughts fly apart / can this man be believed / shall his sins be forgiven / shall his crimes be reprieved". All he needed to do was answer his own question with a YES, and perhaps he could have lived).

My question is, would a typical psychologist, psychiatrist, or coroner expect to typically encounter an individual who either killed themselves or sought to kill themselves based on a similar train of logic and thought? I'm not thinking specifically about police or the law here - more along the lines of either a trap between two competing (moral?) obligations, one of which one has devoted their life to - or just a general epiphany that "everything I ever believed in is wrong" (to use the words in the article "the discovery of deep flaws in his ethical system")? Or any other twist one may put into Javert's logic, translated into the setting of the modern therapist or coroner? Is this sort of suicidal logic a phenomenon known to modern psychiatry? 110.140.69.137 (talk) 15:03, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

For scholarly analysis of the character, google scholar often turns up what you are looking for, if you narrow your search terms enough. "suicide javert" brings up mostly philosophical papers, for example, but you can experiment with adding terms. "psychology suicide" may be closer to what you need. For the more medical part of the question, also try PubMed. 184.147.116.156 (talk) 00:06, 23 October 2016 (UTC)