A Sentimental Suicide: An Examination of Seymour Glass's Suicide Using the “Psychological Autopsy” Technique

Abstract

Stories (1953), Raise the Ceiling Beam Masters: An Introduction to Seymour (1955), and Franny and Zooey (1961). At the age of thirty-one, Seymour Glass ends his life with his own gun while on vacation in Miami with his wife Muriel, and the hero’s suicide still draws the reader’s attention. This article aims to understand the phenomenon of voluntary death by dealing with the suicide of Seymour Glass, the genius of the fictional Glass family, with the psychological autopsy technique. The psychological autopsy technique is used to illuminate cases characterized as suicide or suspicious death and aims to determine the motivation that drives the individual to commit suicide in the background.