The Consequences Of Suicide In Septimus's War

The control the war had over Septimus is indisputable and shows its continuity. Septimus committing suicide was one of the most compelling and “in your face” signs that the war truly never ended, nor will it truly ever end for those who were in combat. One of the signs a war is still going on is that people are dying as a result from it, and here Septimus died directly as a result of the war. He died because he could no longer bear to live with the memories of the war, the psychological pain of the war, the person the war had turned him into. For him, death was finally his freedom from the current war he faced, which was he war in his mind. As long as people are dying, as long as people are suffering, as long as people are still remembering, …show more content…
I’d argue no, as indirect events can still completely revolutionize our live trajectory, and the war is an example of that. Though Septimus was the character who suffered most obviously from the effects of the war, other members did not leave unscatched. Reiza, Septimus’s wife, also suffers as a result of the war, proving that for her the war will truly never be over, and that it greatly affected even those who weren’t fighting on the battle lines. She suffers because she must take care of a man who can’t even take care of himself, let alone love or support her, and the worst of all might be that she has no one to care about her own well-being. “Look! Her wedding ring slipped – she had grown so thin. It was she who suffered – but she had nobody to tell” (Wolff 23). Septimus can’t even cope with his own emotions, let alone allow himself to acknowledge that he is the reason his wife is unhappy, isolated, and in pain. Reiza suffered in silence, and isn’t that a war of its own right? Her constant caregiving for Septimus has caused her to suffer, and is not something even love, which is supposed to always prevail, can overcome.She even admits she can barely stand being around him saying, “She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible” (22).The way Septimus sees the world has …show more content…
For instance, the upper class of London is able to somewhat easily seem to move on from this event, while others, like Septimus, are both physically and mentally incapable of doing so. From Clarissas perspective, the war is over, and that helps her appreciate life even more. For her, and the rest of London, are trying to get their culture and lives and world back to what it was before the war. This is evident through Clarissa’s big party she is throwing. Her throwing a party is almost in a way how she copes with the world around her. The fact that Clarissa says, “But it was over; thank Heaven-over” seems as if she is glossing over the fact of the war, brushing it off, because it is something she is capable of doing. She is not dwelling on the lives lost, she is instead appreciating its end. She is capable of covering up the war with elegant parties, pretending it never existed, maybe in part because when she acknowledges the death of others she is faced with her own dooming mortality. Clarissa’s denial is evident when Clarissa’s husband, Richard, returns from lunch and mentions the Armenians who were “hunted out of existence, maimed, frozen, the victims of cruelty and injustice”, yet Clarissa admits she cares more about her beautiful roses than the people who are suffering (117). Clarissa focuses on the beauty and materialistic aspects of her life, seemingly in part to cover up the other horrible