Need an argumentative essay on Suicide and Its Cultural Impact as Depicted through Literature. Needs to be 5 pages. Please no plagiarism.Download file to see previous pages... The first example of a c

Need an argumentative essay on Suicide and Its Cultural Impact as Depicted through Literature. Needs to be 5 pages. Please no plagiarism.

The first example of a culture's views on suicide is through Ama Atta Aidoo's play, Anowa. The story centers on the a young girl, Anowa who chooses to go against the conventional ways of her family and village, and marries a man of her choice and moves away to live with him. Over the story however, she finds that the life she had hoped for with her chosen husband is not turning out as expected and instead took on a number of tragic and unexpected twists, despite their prosperity in terms of monetary status and power. Eventually, as a result, differences arise between Anowa and her husband, and because they are unable to resolve them, Anowa eventually takes her own life, which is viewed by her village as a fitting end and punishment of sorts for the choices she made throughout her life. Anowa on the other hand took her life in an attempt to carry on living life in her own way, making her own choices, even when it related to the choice of death. In her view, it was the final statement of freedom that she would make. Naturally, the village people condemn her for it, as they had condemned her for her actions throughout. Nonetheless, Anowa dies a free spirit, and because the Akan culture believes that death is not the end of a person's life, but a mere continuation of it in a different, more concrete form, the likelihood is that Anowa as a spirit would remain free and uninhibited as she had hoped to be, despite the criticism of those around her in the village she chose to leave behind, but was ultimately brought back to anyway. The second story, Patriotism, by Japanese author Yukio Mishima, draws on the theme of seppuku, the honored samurai tradition of ritual suicide, a theme that is often used in Japanese literature. The story focuses on the significance of honor and loyalty in the Japanese culture, particularly towards one's country. The story centers on a Lieutenant and his wife, who commit suicide together, after the Lieutenant learns that his comrades have been working against the emperor, and he therefore needed to choose whether to be loyal to his comrades or to his country. Unable and unwilling to choose any over the other, he decides to commit suicide through the Japanese samurai way of ritual suicide, seppuku, thus showing how his own personal honor was greater than life itself. He did not want to compromise on his loyalty, which would be against the ethics of honor that are upheld so strongly in the Japanese culture, and thus he took his own life rather than choose.