Suicidal Methods

 Suicide is a very prevalent topic in Oedipus, Oryx & Crake, and Hamlet, and even though they all are fundamentally the same, the ways they go through with it all differ.

 In Oedipus, Oedipus’s wife (Jocasta) commits suicide by hanging herself. She kills herself in grief and shame because of everything that has recently unfolded in front of her. Suicide by hanging is a very common way of killing yourself and has been used throughout the centuries where other means of suicide were unavailable.

In Hamlet, Ophelia kills herself after all the traumatic events that have made her insane. Unlike Jocasta though, she drowns herself rather than hanging herself. It is also unknown whether she did this with intent to kill herself (like with Jocasta) or her insanity drove her to not trying to escape the drowning. Regardless, both Ophelia’s’ and Jocasta’s deaths were caused by traumatic events in their lives. In Oryx & Crake, Crake does not directly kill himself like with Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, nor like Ophelia in Hamlet. Instead, he forces Jimmy to kill him. Crake knows that if he can anger Jimmy, Jimmy will open fire and kill him, and thus he does so by killing Oryx. This is different to both Jocasta and Ophelia’s deaths as while technically it wasn’t suicide, Crake had intentions of no longer living and this was a way for him to have his way. Additionally, this was not caused by traumatic events but instead, he was just trying to rid the world of impurities, which included himself.