You could take the pistol out of the drawer and hold it. “Handle it freely,” was Grandfather’s expression. But you could not play with it because it was “a serious weapon” …. Then after your father had shot himself with this pistol, and you had come from school and they’d had the funeral, the coroner had returned it after the inquest saying, “Bob, I guess you might want to keep the gun. I am supposed to hold it, but …” He had put the gun back in the drawer in the cabinet where it belonged, but the next day he took it out and he had ridden up to the top of the high country … had stopped by the lake which was supposed to be eight hundred feet deep …. He climbed out on a rock and leaned over, and saw himself holding the gun, and then he dropped it, and saw it go down making bubbles until it was just as big as a watch charm in that clear water, and then it was out of sight …. Then, as he thought, he realized if there was any such thing as ever meeting, he and his grandfather would be acutely embarrassed by the presence of his father. Any one has the right to do it, he thought. But it isn’t a good thing to do. I understand it, but I do not approve of it …. Sure, I understand it, but. Yes, but. You have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do a thing like that.

From “Whom the Bells Toll,” by Ernest Hemingway.

By now, those who read my posts know that my favorite writer is Ernest Hemingway.  I am a Spaniard, and reading this novel about the Spanish Civil War makes me feel terrible emotions. He graphically depicts the horrendous crimes committed by men spurred by ideologies capable of turning humans into cruel beasts.  In this work, the main character Robert Jordan criticized the terrible selfishness of suicide. But then, I am at a loss, how could Hemingway do it to himself?  What did it lead him to execute such an act of utmost selfishness?  I guess, we will never know.