The Why Question
Excerpt from Girl of Light & Shadow: A Memoir of My Daughter, Who Killed Herself (2022), pp. 1-3
EVERY GOOD STORY, every classic story—according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Jon Franklin—begins, in Act One, when a (hopefully) sympathetic character, the protagonist, encounters a “complication.” An event or situation that causes the character some sort of problem, or raises a question, which generates tension.
The classic story develops, then, in Act Two, along any number of different lines in which the character struggles, confronts the complication, and attempts to alleviate the unwanted tension it has introduced into his or her life.
And, if it’s the kind of story that most people prefer, it tends to conclude, in Act Three, with a so-called “resolution” of the originating complication. Meaning, the tension is dissolved in one way or another. The scale is balanced. Ideally, in a manner that makes the audience feel—if not entirely satisfied—that they have not wasted their precious time.
In other words, people want something approximating a positive outcome, a constructive or productive or, at least, instructive resolution. You know, a happy ending. The (hopefully) sympathetic character overcomes the problem, at long last, or answers the question. Learns a meaningful lesson. Or gracefully accepts defeat.
The complication is not supposed to pointlessly kill the protagonist, after an interim period of useless flailing about.
The point of a good story, says Franklin, is that the (hopefully) sympathetic character develops, somehow. Grows and matures. The protracted or convoluted journey from problem to resolution profoundly changes him or her from an endearingly or even pathetically flawed human being into a slightly better, more enlightened version of him- or herself—which is, ultimately, a stand-in for what members of the audience hope or dream for themselves.
In the most compelling tales, this transformation happens largely inside the protagonist’s head or heart, through some flash of insight or slowly dawning realization, regardless of the outer danger, damage or devastation he or she has suffered along the way.
Of course, this understanding of story presents an author who plans to write about suicide with a decidedly disorienting dilemma (a classic complication).
Within one week of my daughter’s death, I knew that I would write a book about what happened to her, and why. I’m a writer. It’s how I make sense of events of such magnitude on the Richter Scale of Life. And, god knows, I desperately needed to construct a coherent narrative of the tremors that preceded this existential earthquake.
So, Beth was the protagonist, in my mind. This would be her story.
And therein lay the dilemma.
Having long appreciated Franklin’s exposition of what makes a good story, having shared these classic “Acts”—Complication, Development, and Resolution—with participants in classes and workshops I had taught on “writing your life story,” I began to wonder how on earth I could possibly write my daughter’s death story without, well, ruining the resolution.
Whatever complications my (hopefully) sympathetic character had faced; however heroically she had struggled to overcome the problems they had created, in the end, she was utterly defeated. To resolve the tension, she killed herself.
End of story.
Well, crap, I thought, with dismay. That’s a singularly unsatisfying yarn, as classic stories around the campfire go. Jon Franklin would say throw it away.
I had to find another story.
One in which somebody learns something worthwhile. In which the key character confronts, controls or conquers the complication and comes out, I don’t know--larger somehow. Wiser, deeper, more grateful maybe. More conscious, perhaps, of the thin bright thread of life woven into the vast dark fabric of time and space itself. Certainly not dead.
And the only candidate I could see that fit the criteria was, uh . . . me.
In my story, Beth’s suicide wouldn’t be the resolution—the end of the story. It would be the complication—the beginning of a quite different story. One in which, like it or not, I would be the protagonist, after all, the (hopefully) sympathetic character.
But this particular story, I felt, would not focus primarily on the unspeakable aftermath of losing my beloved child, but on the gnawing not-knowing what, exactly, had led to her dreadful, deadly decision . . . which made it all the more unbearable.
The why question.
Obviously, in the awful aftershocks of the earthquake, I had to “overcome” somehow—or (better) to integrate—the eviscerating emotional trauma of Beth’s stunningly violent departure from the world, from the unfinished story of my own life. And I have, insofar as such a thing is possible.
But that’s not the core story I wanted to tell.
Mostly, I wanted to illuminate the nerve-wracking historical, prehistorical, archeological, evolutionary, psychological, interpersonal, neurological and sociological minefields I had to traverse, with extraordinary care, on tiptoe, as it were, before I could arrive safely on the other side with a felt sense that I understood Beth’s final, horrific act—an act so perplexing, initially, that I was effectively paralyzed until I could unravel the Gordian Knot.
As Jeff VanderMeer writes, in Annihilation: “Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”
In my epic tale, therefore, the resolution occurs only when it dawns on the reluctant protagonist that, after a long, intense, emotionally exhausting and highly intellectual “forensic investigation,” a sort of biopsychosocial autopsy, if you will—or (better) a fantastical Homeric odyssey through mythic time and space—he has returned from his journey, whole.
He has actually found the answer to the haunting, allegedly unanswerable question: Why the hell did this happen?
The tension—or, the pain—of not-knowing, then, yields to the analgesic of knowing. A rare, exotic species of resolution. At least, in suicidology.
Contrary to popular opinion, conventional wisdom, and the deadening, simplistic, one-dimensional narrative of “mental illness” that permeates all public discourse about suicide today, he has unearthed the staggering, interwoven complexities—the seeds, the roots, the ancestral origins; the intergenerational cast of contributing characters, the bit players, antagonists, villains and heroes; the incidents and accidents, the adversities, the loves and losses, the proximal and distal causes and clues; the precipitating factors, forces and triggers—which, ultimately, in fact, make sense of his daughter’s fearsome fate, however many gaps, ellipses or lacunas remain.
Thus, all he must do to definitively dissolve the disorienting dilemma of her devastating death is to light an inviting fire, gather a circle of weary pilgrims passing by on the road either to or from the cold, stone citadel of suicide, and tell the terrifying tale—without flinching.
Beginning with the complication.
The classic story develops, then, in Act Two, along any number of different lines in which the character struggles, confronts the complication, and attempts to alleviate the unwanted tension it has introduced into his or her life.
And, if it’s the kind of story that most people prefer, it tends to conclude, in Act Three, with a so-called “resolution” of the originating complication. Meaning, the tension is dissolved in one way or another. The scale is balanced. Ideally, in a manner that makes the audience feel—if not entirely satisfied—that they have not wasted their precious time.
In other words, people want something approximating a positive outcome, a constructive or productive or, at least, instructive resolution. You know, a happy ending. The (hopefully) sympathetic character overcomes the problem, at long last, or answers the question. Learns a meaningful lesson. Or gracefully accepts defeat.
The complication is not supposed to pointlessly kill the protagonist, after an interim period of useless flailing about.
The point of a good story, says Franklin, is that the (hopefully) sympathetic character develops, somehow. Grows and matures. The protracted or convoluted journey from problem to resolution profoundly changes him or her from an endearingly or even pathetically flawed human being into a slightly better, more enlightened version of him- or herself—which is, ultimately, a stand-in for what members of the audience hope or dream for themselves.
In the most compelling tales, this transformation happens largely inside the protagonist’s head or heart, through some flash of insight or slowly dawning realization, regardless of the outer danger, damage or devastation he or she has suffered along the way.
Of course, this understanding of story presents an author who plans to write about suicide with a decidedly disorienting dilemma (a classic complication).
Within one week of my daughter’s death, I knew that I would write a book about what happened to her, and why. I’m a writer. It’s how I make sense of events of such magnitude on the Richter Scale of Life. And, god knows, I desperately needed to construct a coherent narrative of the tremors that preceded this existential earthquake.
So, Beth was the protagonist, in my mind. This would be her story.
And therein lay the dilemma.
Having long appreciated Franklin’s exposition of what makes a good story, having shared these classic “Acts”—Complication, Development, and Resolution—with participants in classes and workshops I had taught on “writing your life story,” I began to wonder how on earth I could possibly write my daughter’s death story without, well, ruining the resolution.
Whatever complications my (hopefully) sympathetic character had faced; however heroically she had struggled to overcome the problems they had created, in the end, she was utterly defeated. To resolve the tension, she killed herself.
End of story.
Well, crap, I thought, with dismay. That’s a singularly unsatisfying yarn, as classic stories around the campfire go. Jon Franklin would say throw it away.
I had to find another story.
One in which somebody learns something worthwhile. In which the key character confronts, controls or conquers the complication and comes out, I don’t know--larger somehow. Wiser, deeper, more grateful maybe. More conscious, perhaps, of the thin bright thread of life woven into the vast dark fabric of time and space itself. Certainly not dead.
And the only candidate I could see that fit the criteria was, uh . . . me.
In my story, Beth’s suicide wouldn’t be the resolution—the end of the story. It would be the complication—the beginning of a quite different story. One in which, like it or not, I would be the protagonist, after all, the (hopefully) sympathetic character.
But this particular story, I felt, would not focus primarily on the unspeakable aftermath of losing my beloved child, but on the gnawing not-knowing what, exactly, had led to her dreadful, deadly decision . . . which made it all the more unbearable.
The why question.
Obviously, in the awful aftershocks of the earthquake, I had to “overcome” somehow—or (better) to integrate—the eviscerating emotional trauma of Beth’s stunningly violent departure from the world, from the unfinished story of my own life. And I have, insofar as such a thing is possible.
But that’s not the core story I wanted to tell.
Mostly, I wanted to illuminate the nerve-wracking historical, prehistorical, archeological, evolutionary, psychological, interpersonal, neurological and sociological minefields I had to traverse, with extraordinary care, on tiptoe, as it were, before I could arrive safely on the other side with a felt sense that I understood Beth’s final, horrific act—an act so perplexing, initially, that I was effectively paralyzed until I could unravel the Gordian Knot.
As Jeff VanderMeer writes, in Annihilation: “Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”
In my epic tale, therefore, the resolution occurs only when it dawns on the reluctant protagonist that, after a long, intense, emotionally exhausting and highly intellectual “forensic investigation,” a sort of biopsychosocial autopsy, if you will—or (better) a fantastical Homeric odyssey through mythic time and space—he has returned from his journey, whole.
He has actually found the answer to the haunting, allegedly unanswerable question: Why the hell did this happen?
The tension—or, the pain—of not-knowing, then, yields to the analgesic of knowing. A rare, exotic species of resolution. At least, in suicidology.
Contrary to popular opinion, conventional wisdom, and the deadening, simplistic, one-dimensional narrative of “mental illness” that permeates all public discourse about suicide today, he has unearthed the staggering, interwoven complexities—the seeds, the roots, the ancestral origins; the intergenerational cast of contributing characters, the bit players, antagonists, villains and heroes; the incidents and accidents, the adversities, the loves and losses, the proximal and distal causes and clues; the precipitating factors, forces and triggers—which, ultimately, in fact, make sense of his daughter’s fearsome fate, however many gaps, ellipses or lacunas remain.
Thus, all he must do to definitively dissolve the disorienting dilemma of her devastating death is to light an inviting fire, gather a circle of weary pilgrims passing by on the road either to or from the cold, stone citadel of suicide, and tell the terrifying tale—without flinching.
Beginning with the complication.
