 the rule of mind over body is rather a peculiar thing to do, as though to set on purpose to effect the proof that there is no such thing as purpose… Then again, it may be argued, one has to do unquestioningly what one has decided if one is to know with certainty who one is and where one stands. Suicide is a very decisive action, and most of our actions are not of that character, so it is arresting.
This cannot be taken to mean that suicide, even averted, is a public spectacle, like execution surely must be. It is the morrow’s papers, instead, that might publicize it; it is the gossip and the inquest that would constitute a hurray. A sense of pride might require of a man no to give the public this dubious satisfaction. The scandal: How can the people, those who fail most unstintingly the man who contemplates suicide then turn around and say, he had it coming, and has got but what he well deserved! That is the ugly passion behind our conventions–there is something cruel in the moralism. Chesterton has no time for worries about the afterlife. It is society that concentrates his attention and he is not satisfied that we are anything but eager spectators to be stupefied by the suffering of the people who reject society most thoroughly. We have it on the authority of novels and movies, that the moralistic love to gossip. A man like the protagonist of this poem will have his pride, if nothing else, and then how could he give such satisfaction to hyenas? Why, they did not even work for their amusement, but so fondly do they hold themselves esteemed, they think they do deserve it gratis…
Maybe there’s something to that thought—that suicide is like a public execution. Were we to think that we have our own way of life, which we hold to be good–then those who fail to experience or understand its goodness are somehow in the blame. What’s wrong with them? We do applaud those brilliant few who from among us rise to meet our expectations, not to say our dreams. Shall we not then good riddance those who fail impertinently to impress? There is a suggestion in this stanza that society pushes people into excessive actions.
Chesterton next lays out a seemingly silly, random series of reasons not to die. What is there to live for, but everyday life? One supposes tomorrow always is the day one takes one’s pay. And the sword recalls past honor—a mere reminder now of distant deeds of war? Beyond the advantageous and the noble, there is a vague matter tied to the religion of the place, a nuisance that might be avoided. These are supposed to be the mundane worries of our mundane lives, the kinds of things with which one keeps so busy as to pass the time. These are also the institutions that order society, if mentioned in passing. Yet they are piddling stuff, and talk of cookery is fit for Homer’s talking pigs, who have so reasonably learned to say the pleasant is the good. Save possibly the works of Juvenal, for he seems to have made a living telling all who’d listen how unbearable their lives were… For all that, the two reasons in the second half of the stanza are personal, individual, in a way the others are not quite. There is a motion from most general to most particular here that culminates in moralizing satire, which is not a surprise. If life were this assortment of unease and guilty memories, if life were this, the fighting vainly ‘gainst the old ennui, then life were not worth living and we’d all be reasonable to just go hang.
There is more at stake here. Let’s look at only one image: “My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall.” Chesterton’s poetic rhetoric is at work here. First, the importance of this image is that it opposes the preceding. That was about the future, this is about the past. That was explicit, this one is not. That was about money or property or advantage, this is about reputation or honor. Secondly, the image itself, what it says. Forensic skill is required here: A sword is an officer’s weapon and it signifies some achievement. But an uncle is not a father or grandfather, so this is not a military family. At the same tim