So fiction doesn’t have anything to say about actual life? Interesting. As a lit prof, I’ll politely disagree with that assumption.
Well, I have my doubts about lit in general (why is so much that is considered “good literature” so depressing, while more upliftng work is not considered literature?)
Not having a copy at home and not wanting to violate copyright, I am able only to see what others have described the story to be. {ETA: Since I had never heard of this story, I thought it was recent, but actually it is old enough to be out of copyright.}
However, yes, literature often describes aspects of the human condition. However, it is less than anecdotal. The story could easily have been about a woman suffering from PPD and being bought out if her depression by the challenge of being locked up in a room in a strange house, etc. Or the story could have been about a woman suffering from PPD who, upon being locked in a room, recalled the Rosary her grandmother taught her and started praying and thus leaves the room re-united to God. Or it ciuld have been sci-fi or fantasy and any number of things might have happened.
But in any case, the woman in question suffers from postpartum depression and is being isolated by her physician husband. She is being kept away from others but she is still receiving medical and (to some limited extent, given the time period) psychological treatment. She, too, was with family and seeing a physician. (Actually reading the story could have revealed all of these things easily.) But isolation does strange things to people who are already depressed. If in fact this suicide victim was being removed from friends and social media, was being kept at home rather than being allowed to engage with peers, etc., I would simply note that while her parents’ desire to remove negative influences may be understandable,** it’s quite possible **they removed too much from her circle and *unintentionally *made the situation worse.
It’s also quite possible that had the school and the friends supported the parents and helped the teen to deal with that situation in a healthy way that the parents wouldn’t have needed to cut certain social features out of the teen’s life. For example, one can say, look you’rs suffering from GID, your parents are worried about you–they love you and want what is best for you. It’s true that you are not getting what you want at this point, but you are 17 and in one year, you will be anle to do as you please. And that’s a whole different from what so many teens actually say these days, and apparently, looking at this thread, all too many adults.
I don’t understand your anger at this child (and yes, she was a child).
17 is old enough to know better than that. But what really bothers me is not that these teen committed these acts, but that on this, a Catholic forum, the parents have been treated so badly, with such judgement and condemnation and so little lack of even trying to look at the situation from their point of view.
This is a tragedy for everyone involved. I feel nothing but tremendous sadness for her parents and for her, as she didn’t realize that life could have gotten substantially better and she could have grown to enjoy a happy life. Hardening one’s heart to the pain she experienced or to the suffering her parents are experiencing seems to be the antithesis of what Christ would demand of us.
The teen certainly had a hard heart to commit suicide in that way, leaving that note. That was not, I feel so sad… I’m going to kill myself; that was literally F— you to the parents for not going along with the sex change process and a completel lack of compassion for anyone else, like the poor truck driver.
