Suicide by Modernism

Suicide by Modernism

The memoir The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon makes me think of a recent painting, Suicide by Modernism by Mark Kostabi. In this painting the artist shows how modernism, the not traditional ways are overpowering tradition. In the painting the artist shows a lot of his icons of art (Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and more), which are all surrounded by a man who has just committed suicide. This shows how all the artists above, all of the 20^th century has influenced this individual. This shows the power of art and the power that persons have on other and how this can produce effects on the behaviors of others.

In this case, what the painting is showing is how the power of the 20^th century influenced this individual to take his life.

I am reminded of the book in the painting because Brent is also influenced by his classmates. This also occurs in the 20^th century. His classmates didn’t influence him to kill himself, but that the pressure of society made him do that. I am not excusing him in what he did but I understand that he felt anxiety because he wanted people to like him. Brent thought that if he continued living everyone would hate him, but it was on the contrary, if he would take his life, everyone would miss him. He realizes this after the accident.

 The painting reminds me of the book in many ways but one is because in the book Brent makes a rushed decision because of society, this decision made him do something he didn’t really want to do with his body, ‘I don’t want to die anymore’ says Brent in page 44. Just like in the painting everything might seem normal, natural, and the colors give the painting joy, but the space that the man who hung himself represents a lot of distance in what was really occurring. He is distanced himself from reality, and this is what Brent did, he distanced himself and didn’t think of what could happen, he only thought of the consequences that would happen if he continued living, which in comparison, are minimal.

The same happens with Brent, everything seems fine, and at the beginning he is just doing mischiefs he was playing, but he never really understands it what reality is until he feels the pain and understands the pain.

In the book we understand that Brent knows that what he did is wrong and that he doesn’t quite understand why he did it because the reasons just seem invalid now that he is in pain, ‘those don’t seem like good reasons anymore’.

We tend to criticize society, but we are society.  We hate the people, but we are the people. 

'Save Me'

More than 36,000 people in the U.S. commit suicide every year and about 2 million adolescents attempt suicide each year. In the memoir The Burn Journals, the author Brent Runyon tells us the story of when, at the age of fourteen, he decides to take his life.

In the novel Runyon appears as a cool guy, he has many friends and he is always the funny one. At first one wouldn’t expect for him to commit suicide since he was a normal teenager, and we all go through hard times. He didn’t just try once, but multiple times.

He tells us the story of what led him to make this decision and what happened after he made it. We notice at the beginning that he thinks he is not good enough. He even says he told his best friend he was going to kill himself and that his friend didn’t care. We can see how low he believed of himself as he is constantly punishing himself for things that are not his fault. For example he and his best friend Stephen like the same girl, Megan. As soon as Brent finds out that Megan likes him instead of Stephen he literally says I hate myself. This shows how low his self-esteem is.

I have never experienced wanting to take my own life, but I respect why some people could. I haven’t felt the need to take my own life, I repeat, but I have felt alone and I have felt far away from home, and far away from my friends. Life has taught me a lot of things, and when you are far away from home you learn to value what you have, you learn to appreciate a lot of things, a lot of little things that make you who you are. I don’t judge Brent because I don’t know what he was going through and you can never feel what someone else is feeling but I don’t think it justifies his actions.

He doesn’t appreciate the opportunities life gives him like being a part of the ‘G.T’, throughout the pages I read of this memoir he is constantly making rushed decisions, one of them, a little one, taking himself out of the ‘G.T’, a big one, taking his own life.

So far I don’t have enough information to believe taking his life is reasonable but I suspect that he is going through a complicated time in which a kid starts to become an adult. Being a teenager is a very difficult moment in someone’s life because they let go of their parent’s protection and they start to become a person of their own. Brent must be lost in this stage in which he hasn’t found his real self and he is very insecure. His self-esteem is very low so that is why he blames himself with things that are out of his control. So far it seems like a snowball effect is taking over Brent’s life. He is taking bad decisions, which lead to even worse ones, and at the end these will bring him to the extent where he attempts to take his life.

Life is our most valuable gift and I don’t think suicide is the answer for anything.